The Legend of Zelda: The Dead Lords
by Gatherum
Summary: In whose hands does history's course belong?
1. Prologue

_History dictates that men will pay any price for ultimate power. How saddening, then, that they lie, and are lied to, until their vision is clouded. They cannot see the blade at their throats, and they do not notice, thus, that they have since passed from the world of the living, doomed to seek out their virtues in an existence where there __are__ none to be had._

_ Yet, there are some who do not fall into this trap, and, pitifully, fall into another: that of guilt, for holding that blade. It is not oft thought, during the critical moment, that murder en masse sometimes serves a "greater good", as it were. Yet, for this world that the Goddesses created, there is no other way: There are some that must live, and some that must die, and it is the individuals within these absolutes that so pathetically carry out the role, time and again. It is a vicious cycle, repeated through millennia, perhaps one of a few true constancies the world has ever known._

_ And the past will repeat itself once again, for the Goddesses who created the world, its Law, and all life forms that would uphold the Law, fail to fathom and recognize defiance. Or is this perhaps what they intended from the beginning? No mortal could say._

_ But mortals do have one power over the divine: They have their history, and they may shape the future. Such knowledge is somewhat esoteric, but the world was lost to the Goddesses upon the moment they departed for the Heavens. They completed their labours, yet failed to impose their will upon their creations. But this is not something that they can easily accept, for even divinity is not without its avarice._

_Now, they must continually choose, among these mortals, hands worthy enough to bear their crests. It is in this way that they deprive mortals of their aforementioned power._

_It is a curious and perhaps dangerous thought, then, when one thinks of what might happen should the Goddesses be denied their control…_

Descrædia, from _Memoirs of a Dissident__  
_Prologue, Section I

**Prologue**

**Part I**

Cold. The air of these endless convoluted paths pierced her lungs like a spear at perfect honing. It was always this way at night-time, and for that matter, during the daytime as well. The gargantuan trees served as umbrellas against the warmth of the Sun that all beings who resided here knew existed, yet seldom experienced. Enough light, at least, penetrated the broad shield-sized leaves to prevent perpetual gloom.

Further downward, these same trees waged an endless war of greed with one another, their winding trunks, they alone larger than the resident Kokiri dwellings themselves, sometimes entwining and writhing about each other over possession of the Earth. It was a battle waged for millennia. The trees had taken to sprouting millions of vines, tough as the hardest diamonds, all across the forest floor.

These vines got the better of the lone Kokiri that had been running frantically through the wood, clothed only in a tunic that complimented the land around her. The freezing cold had not deterred her, though she could feel her lungs burning from its touch. She did not pay it any mind, nor did she quite notice that she had tripped over a vine of particularly substantial circumference. She had not seen it; she could see very little in the darkness, not that it mattered: tears escaped her eyes in streams, impeding her vision, her heartbeat running even faster than the speed at which her legs had taken her, and she felt cold for reasons other than the night-time air. What overshadowed all of that was the void that was growing inside of her; in her stomach, in her mind, and in her heart.

_Why?_ she thought.

It was the only thing that registered when she thought of _him_; that boy that she had grown up with, stood up for, and endured the pain of seeing leave once before. Except then, she always knew that he would come back. But this time, she had not felt that sliver of destiny. Now, she felt…

She was a sage…or was…or will be? Time was so confusing. She had been privy to visions in the deepest night sleeps. They all imparted a destiny to her; one concerning an evil man on a black horse that would raise Hell from below the world, to the purity of the Sacred Realm. He would do so through his command of an endless army of demons. But he would be stopped: she would join together with five others at the command of a Seventh in sealing away this man. She knew not how this was possible, but somehow, it strengthened her, knowing that her destiny was not always exclusive to these trees that kept everything in and out.

But that was not all. She saw _him_ too. He was…different, but she knew it was him, for her heart reacted every time she saw him in her dreams. He would defeat and subdue the man for the sealing, and bring prosperity to the land. But what, now, would happen now that he was gone? What would become of the land? Of all living things in it? Of him? Of her, and of her…feelings…?

She felt the void spike as she arrived at that point, and what strength she had retained before was now quite lost. As the void widened and everything else seemed to darken and fade out, she retreated inward. She had no more control of her limbs; they came together on their own, curling up to save what warmth was left. Her head was lost to her; an appendage of an independent will that just happened to cling to the rest of her body, for her forehead met her knees, and in that place that was now so empty, save for the writhing vines and grass that poked through them to irritate her smooth, ghost-white skin, she sobbed. The only noise was the sound of her broken breathing, complicated by her rich, green hair (greener even, than her tunic), which had fallen over and into her mouth. She was now as insignificant as a particle of flower pollen in the wood, or a chip of wood off the bark of a kilometre-wide tree. Now, time moved freely and relentlessly.

Something else—something not native to the forest—was growing in the grass, only a few yards away from the crying forest child, though, in her grief, it was unnoticed and unheeded. The crimson shadow expanded, like the bloated, swollen skin of a sprained ankle.

A sound penetrated the quiet and life suddenly slowed to a halt. Out of the blood extended an arm without flesh that crawled with maggots, spiders, and other insects. They fell off of it, splashing into the shadow, like hail in a storm. Another arm in the same condition found its way out. Both of their hands clamped down on unseen supports in the blood and began to push a torso upward. Four large, spider-like legs emerged, severed the vines and embedded themselves in the earth outside the blood puddle's influence. As they had arisen, the torso found its way out of the mess. Its head was completely obscured by a hood, and the only indication that it truly concealed anything was the fact that the creature was vomiting more blood from where its mouth would have presumably been. The torso, resembling that of a human corpse, though much larger, was lined with cuts, gashes, slashes, and essentially every type of wound imaginable. Skin was missing in same places, revealing the bones and long-spent organs underneath.

As its upper body escaped the puddle, out came four more spider's legs that assisted in hoisting up the creature's lower body. It bore the likeness of a giant black Skulltula covered in petrified hair that did not loll, save that it possessed no skull on its abdomen; only more of what one might assume was its young (which tumbled off of it and swam through the puddle onto the grass). The blood flowed and dripped off it like tiny waterfalls.

The human-like figure was incomplete: its end was fused at the waist with the spider's cephalothorax. The spider itself was not ordinary: It had a pair of pincers, each twice the circumference and length of an average human arm. It possessed six eyes as crimson as the pool that it had emerged from, two of them very large, the other four much smaller. The eyes, as a set, were symmetrical, two smaller eyes aside both of the larger ones. The creature hissed a terrible noise that was enough to draw the girl's attention, even in her state of mind.

She sat up and, beholding what stood in front of her, she let out a terrified scream. The miniscule insects that had fallen off of the horrifying creature were clamouring toward her, surrounding her, closing off any escape routes completely. Nonetheless, she looked desperately about for one, but it was useless. They were too many, and too ravenous.

As the spider's hiss subsided, the sound that had disturbed the air before grew as the human figure writhed on top of the rest of its body. Suddenly, it came to a halt and, with a scream even more terrible than the hissing of the spider, shot one of its hands toward the girl.

She covered her ears in pain; it was the sound of the cries of a thousand dying people. Yet, all of the parasites around her were receding, shaking and ailing just as she was. When the cacophony faded, the insects stood completely still, as if this creature of utmost disgust had isolated and halted time around them. But it was not a mere feeling anymore. Nothing else was moving—not the grass, the forest fireflies, nor even the air—save for her, and the beast that confronted her. She could feel its eyes on her, even though she could not see them, and a wave of despair even more unbearable than what she had previously experienced washed over her. She was going to suffocate; it felt as if all of the sins of the world, past, present, and future, had been dropped on her shoulders.

One of its arms shuddered and out of the darkness materialised a large sickle-blade that resembled a crescent moon, stained with the blood of those whose lives it had taken. Its other arm followed suite, and produced the scales, holding them loosely, but firmly, between its thumb and index finger. It was from this that she began to understand exactly what this creature was.

"Dear, young child of the forest who has lost her way and her strength," began the emissary of Hell, its forceful discourse ringing in her ears in so many dying voices that she found it nearly impossible to listen. "We heard your call; saw your tears. Your unbalanced heart resonates through us, and we have thus come, to grant you peace."

The creature's body seemed to fade out of existence for a moment before reconstructing itself.

"Come, dear child. Embrace death as your salvation. Your slumber waits. Join with us!"

The creature pointed the sickle-blade at her as it finished. She rose to her feet and took a few steps backward. Something crackled underneath her steps, but she did not care. She could not break the gaze of the Wraith. Eternal moments of silence passed, and more and more, the weight of the despair crushed her, increasing the appeal of the Wraith's offer. Without thought, her legs moved for her; she took a step toward the creature, inviting a soft "exhale" from it that almost seemed to carry delight.

"Yes. Come, Saria, Sage of the Forest!"

Her eyes widened at the speaking of her name, and in a moment of immense fear, she tore her eyes from the Wraith and sealed them shut. An unbelievable hissing followed, and the sensation of her brain splitting apart overcame her. Then, there was disorientation. She could not keep her footing, and she fell backward upon the vines, unconscious.

**Part II**

_It is a common misconception. The creators of the world, where they __are__ thought to be the Sacred Golden Three, or __to be __the Four Great Ones in each cardinal direction, are worshipped, yet also feared, as if they could take everything away as assuredly as they established it. Indeed, their power is vast and mighty, and to offend them dire__ctly is useless folly, the __sort reserved __for those __fools __possessing __the gift of life__who__ throw it away __at their own discretion__._

_ In reality, the Gods cannot unmake the world. As already stated, their control has whittled down to but a distant influence. Not only that, but their creations of Man have discovered certain…advantages; invented powerful, accursed items and infused them with the fury of their greed. Desire. It is one thing that even the divine cannot hold back for long, for it is the desires of mortals that shaped their own relics._

_ The Sacred Golden Triangles are said to reflect the heart, and that would be proof enough._

Descrædia, from _Memoires of a Dissident_

Prologue, Section II

Colder. It was the call of the dead, and it was always in the air, trapping the regrets of the duly departed (a misnomer; they were not really departed; just dead) within the wide crevices of the vast canyons, where life did not dare to intrude; not anymore. It was the same in the graveyard, where dozens, perhaps hundreds, were buried, though a limited number of headstones suggested otherwise. The wind echoed off of the rocky, narrow trenches which doubled as paths that led nowhere. The night would have been a silent, peaceful one, were it not for the clapping footsteps of the dead soldiers who had given their lives to war, and yet were doomed to walk the earth, having been denied their slumber within it.

It was not unlike an encampment, where some of them stood guard around the graves upon orders given long ago by their superior, while others sat around campfires, telling each other stories through the chattering of their teeth. Their tongues had fallen out of their mouths long ago, yet the words still came just as easily.

Some of them gazed up at the dark sky, hoping to see the stars once again, but a thick blanket of unnatural, smoky clouds foiled their effort. They were soldiers without hearts in the physical sense, but they knew deep within their lingering spirits that the clouds should not have been there. Something was terribly wrong in these lands. Terribly wrong.

But the graves were what the captain had ordered them to guard, and they were loyal.

Night had passed, yet the cold remained. There was no more clapping and no more chattering. Even the bats seemed timid today, which was something that Dampé noted and found odd. But his sadly-disfigured and horrific face only contorted into what was supposed to be a smile (though an outsider would have had difficulty deciding what to truly call it). The less of those pesky critters about, the better, and when there were none at all, it was a good day.

These days, there were never any new arrivals to be buried, and there hadn't been for several years now. By this time, he was convinced that he was the last man alive in all the lands belonging to the Kingdom of Ikana. Well…maybe there was that crazy scientist living in the northern part of the canyon; crazy, because only a damned fool would choose to set up housing in a place as accursed as that. Granted, he didn't have a lot of room to talk, but that was literally right in the middle of it all.

_N__ah_, he thought, _he's probably dead and gone__,__ too. Just __like the King, bless his heart, along with__ his armies, and his messengers, and his people__, and __everyone__ else. Yup. Last man alive. That's me. The last one. Just an old, lonely fool comin' out every day to check on graves__._

Dampé was the Grave keeper, and this was a grave keeper's job: keeping the graves. Simplest-sounding job in the entire world, he would wager.

He didn't much care for it.

But he had heard legends. Stories. Probably myths, just like most of the tripe involving the dead and the lands they roamed upon. He had heard, from some passer-by years ago (he was probably dead by now too), something about some treasure buried underneath the cemetery. He didn't really put much stock in it, but he was old; past his prime (if there ever was a prime, given his working, yet disfigured, broken, and hunched-over physique). His days were numbered, and it was pretty obvious to him. One thing that he never did lose his touch at, though, no matter how old or disfigured he got, was digging. If there was buried treasure to be found, then he would dig it up, and maybe get rich. Then, he'd travel back to Clock Town and rent himself a nice, comfy inn room to spend the rest of his days in. He wasn't a particularly greedy guy, but gods knew that he deserved a nice place to settle down, given how hard he worked through his life despite his shortcomings.

To that end, he came out every day in his usual sluggish strut, one long arm holding his shovel up over his shoulder, the other swaying awkwardly, forward and backward. He came to check on the graves—despite his nervousness and deathly fear of ghosts—looking for some clues on this "treasure."

An outsider wouldn't _believe_ the things that one could find out about Ikana just by looking at what was inscribed on the headstones: history, wars and campaigns, the spoils thereof, and so on. He hadn't found it yet, but he reckoned there was a good chance that one of these stones would tell him something about where to dig. If nothing else, he'd found out enough to write his own history book on the land (the military aspect, at least), and would have considered that instead of treasure hunting if he'd been better with words.

But he wasn't. He was good at digging. And running, if he got scared enough.

He took to reading the headstones in no particular order, and upon retrospect, maybe that hadn't been such a good idea. His age wasn't helping his memory either, and he sometimes found himself frustrated when it finally occurred to him that the headstone he was reading had already been read a few days prior. He wasn't sure on whether or not to find it amusing that he got as irked as other old folks get, even though _he_ didn't have to yell at any stupid young punks always messing around on his lawn (not that there was a lawn to mess around on…and if there had ever been any punk children here, they were probably dead too). He didn't pay it much mind. He was generally patient in the grand scheme of things, and would stay out there until he did find an unread headstone, or until it got dark. Then, he had to get back in his little graveside dwelling for the night, before _they_ came out to play, with their sharp, bloody claws, evil, glowing red eyes, and their clapping, chattering storytelling about gods-knew-what.

At least he had daytime. And today, maybe he would get lucky right away.

And he did, partly because he was still a bit optimistic at the absence of those damned bats. Not wanting to ruin it, he deliberately chose a headstone in the back, near a darker corner, one he knew that he wouldn't have read yet.

But this one was…different. It didn't exactly have what he was looking for on it, but what was carved crudely across it was mysterious, puzzling, and perhaps interesting, all the same:

Here to rest the laws of mortals lay

Where once the departed would repay

Their holy creators to whom they pray

To rest or torture they would say

Here lies the Breaker of Laws

Rise in Pain

Dampé scratched his round, point-deficient chin, squinting in sceptical confusion. Whatever it meant, it didn't sound at all good to him. Especially that last part. As much as he knew that it was hardly possible in these lands anymore, he still hoped that the dead would stay _in_ the ground, not rise from it. That, and a "Breaker of Laws" could be anything from a little punk thief to a murderer (all of both extremes were probably—…no, wait, actually, they still existed in the form of one foreigner that tended to run around these parts; Dampé, of course, despite being a foreigner himself, wanted nothing to do with that sort of character; at least the ones he wanted to steal from didn't still walk…much). That is, if the stone referred to the old Laws of Ikana, as Dampé assumed.

He would note the stone's contents in his diary, all the same. He hoped to gods that this wasn't connected to the treasure. But why the hell not? The fool that he was, he'd already made his home in a graveyard full of the walking dead. Them, and their eyes…and their claws…

Dampé shuddered briefly, and then shook his head as he turned away, beginning toward the next stone. Or at least, he would have liked to if his damned foot would move. His face contorted into an expression of irritation as he tugged it against whatever it had gotten itself caught in.

It was a damned graveyard, filled only with grass, dirt, and the occasional black, petrified tree. He looked down, wondering what in the hell he could possibly have gotten himself tangled in.

As his eyes ventured toward his leg, he stopped dead, his face instantly going pale. What he had gotten his leg caught in, or rather, what had caught _it_, was no entangled vine, or a tree trunk, or something _normal_. It was a hand. A hand at the end of an arm, clothed in a dirty, tattered sleeve, protruding out of the soil in front of the weird stone he'd just read.

Dampé made no noise, save for a tiny, barely-audible squeak. He didn't notice the little trickles of sweat that ran down his oval-shaped head; didn't notice the quivering of his lower lip, extending across his overly long under bite. He remained there for only a couple of seconds before his body leaned back, his eyes widened, and he released a loud, low-pitched scream in terror, his stubby legs forgetting that they were caught and proceeding to carry him at remarkable speed across the graveyard to its exit. He sprinted through the narrow path flanked by two wooden, decrepit fences that led to his stone dwelling, his arms flailing about frantically as he went. He didn't pay his usual curiosity to the giant, dormant, folded-up skeleton creature that rested under the arch next to his dwelling; not for the chest atop the Dwelling, surrounded by a ring of flame—flame that never went out—that he once thought might have been what he was looking for (he later decided against it; he was looking for _buried _treasure); he didn't really care for anything. Didn't think, didn't slow down, and definitely didn't stop. Not until he had bolted through the door and turned all of the numerous locks he had installed on it as soon as he was behind it.

Afterward, he was in the space under his cot, shivering and whimpering in the dim-lit, blue-bricked little room that was the interior of his dwelling. Through the inane babble that managed to escape the spaces between the few teeth he had left, he uttered but one shaken, timid assurance to anyone he, in his paranoia, thought might be listening: "I-I ain't…s-seen nothin' an' I don't kn-know nothin'…"

_W__hy is __it __so…dark…? _she thought, _Why __can't I…__see…?__ Why can't__ I…__move…?_

She was somehow confined, and the first thing she had noticed was that she couldn't breathe. The second thing was that she somehow didn't need to. The third thing was the question of why that was. The fourth thing was the terrifying realization that there was no answer. She would remain on that thought for a few moments before calming herself down enough to notice other, more physically meaningful things.

The fact that, wherever she was, it felt…dirty, for example. Also, how she not only felt confined and restrained, but also compressed, pushed against on all sides. Her arms were forcibly crossed against her chest, her hands clenched in fists upon her shoulders. Her legs and knees were pressed against each other. Her chin was likely level with the rest of her torso. Her eyes, she could tell, were closed, not that she suspected that there was very much to look at.

Despite the compression, what she concluded to have been dirt seemed soft, and a little moist. She did not feel the unpleasant sensation of wetness against her bare skin, and assumed that she was, at the very least, clothed in something thin.

She struggled a bit, trying to move her arms, Once again disturbed over the fact that she was underground and not breathing, yet not suffocating either. It was as if she was dead and alive at the same time.

She currently had no sense of the passing of time, but as the moments progressed, little by little, she could move her arms back and forth. She could not help but to wonder, though, exactly how deep she was buried. If it was more than a few feet, then what would be the point of struggling? At the moment, for unclear, yet somehow, not unfamiliar reasons, she was not particularly concerned with living. But other than the details of her current predicament, her mind was fragmented; full, but filled with random clumps of intangible thoughts, all pressed together unintelligibly, just as her body was.

All the more reason to get out, so that perhaps she could think clearly.

She tried pushing upward with her arms. She had been right: the dirt was soft and wet; it must have rained recently. The dirt was firm, but moveable. She felt it give just a tiny bit in response to the pressure she exerted.

With growing confidence, she ground her fists against the dirt, whittling it away. Eventually, she was able to move her fingers. It was difficult, not because of the dirt, but because they felt incredibly weak, like she had slept and had not moved for decades. She took a few moments to exercise them, with what little room she had. They did not feel natural. They felt like someone else's fingers, as if someone had chopped her off her own and stitched these on in their place.

When they at least felt useable, she began to claw at the dirt, hoping dearly that she would not make it worse. She wriggled her fingers, then her wrists, and then her arms through the earth above, hoping for a breakthrough of some kind.

It seemed like an eternity, but eventually, she felt the air hit her left hand as it escaped the dirt. Inside, she felt victorious as she extended her arm fully outward. Was it too much to hope that she would find something to grab on to and use to help pull herself up?

Surprisingly, she did grasp something. Notwithstanding the tiny pieces of earth between her fingers, whatever she had in her hand felt…organic. Fleshy.

And what was that that she also felt? Was that…bone?

Inside, she grimaced. Was she holding on to someone else on the surface? She couldn't imagine that it would be a very pleasant experience to be grabbed by someone underneath the ground.

But she held on anyway. As far as she knew, this was as good as it was going to get.

Just as she began to pull herself toward the surface, however, she felt a jolt. She arose through the dirt suddenly as she lost hold of what she assumed was the other person's ankle. A sharp, agonizing pain coursed through her arm, and if she wasn't still submerged, for the most part, in dirt, she would have screamed. Her arm, her fingers, and likely the rest of her body were still incredibly weak, and the sudden jolt had not been good for them at all. Her eyelids pressed against each other tightly and she clenched her teeth, her throat producing a tiny whimper.

The pain took another few moments to subside, and it took a bit longer for her to think straight. When it had died down to a dull ache, she noted that her elbow had been pulled above the surface, nearly taking her shoulder with it, but not quite. Still, she was thankful. She could use her elbow to prop herself upward. She did so, simultaneously pushing her other arm out to help in the effort. Though the use of the muscles in her left arm sent another jolt of pain through it, and the use of those in her right arm felt just plain uncomfortable, she tried to ignore both as the top of her head peeked through the dirt. Soon, her head was completely free, followed closely by her neck and shoulders. Afterward, she tried using her hands, pushing herself out. Her chest emerged, and then, her stomach.

Given the sudden discomfort in her eyelids, she could tell that it was daytime. But she could not feel the warmth of the sun.

Her eyelids were shy and reluctant, but they opened slowly. She managed only a tiny slit of an opening before the light penetrated her eyes and she closed them again. Her lids quivered, chastising her for the dangerous stunt that she had pulled.

But she chose not to listen to them and tried again. This time, she went further, keeping them open at all costs, despite the burning that followed within her eyes themselves.

The image that greeted her was little to speak of. Everything was a clumsy, blurry mix of colours, but it was clearing up slowly with every second, at least. Were these _her_ eyes? They obviously had not been used for _years_. At least, that was what it felt like. Her temples ached from the mere effort of using them.

As time passed, things became evident: there were oddly-shaped stones placed throughout…wherever this was. Green ground; grass? Black, Jagged, deformed protrusions in the background; dead trees? A small line of brown; a dirt path?

She strained her eyes impatiently, commanding them to clear up faster. They complied somewhat, and she saw that all of her guesses had been correct. But she was disturbed once more. The stones she saw…they were headstones.

_A…graveyard?_ she thought.

She blinked, the next thoughts causing her stomach to plummet. With some effort, she twisted herself and her head around.

It was as she had feared. There it was: a headstone, right behind where she had just halfway dug out of.

She had risen from the grave.

Instantly, she felt anxious, yet she did not breathe heavily. She breathed weakly; yet, it was a kind of pseudo-breathing. She did not feel the air passing into her lungs, and somehow, she was still defying mortal logic by being alive.

But she reacted, all the same: despite her weak body, frightened and whimpering, she frantically struggled to free her legs, kicking and clawing until she could bend her knees and raise from the dirt mess she had made. She twirled clumsily around to face her stone. There was something carved on it, but her sight was not up to the task of making it out, nor did she really want to know what it was. She instinctively backed away, and then stumbled as her weakened legs gave out under her weight. She fell, landing flat on her back. The force of the impact caused her to release a small cough. Her throat protested with an unpleasant, scratchy pain. It, too, probably had not been used for decades.

Her head hurt too. She must have hit it when she fell; or perhaps it was the mental shock. Notwithstanding which, she felt faint. Her vain efforts to breathe slowed, her eyelids suddenly felt extremely heavy, and consciousness was once again slipping away from her. Vaguely, she almost realized what was happening, but came just short of grasping it, losing the battle before it even began. Everything became black again, just like it had been in the earth, and she lost herself.

Above the graveyard, upon a high cliff, a tattered mass of black cloth stood. A small gust of air passed through hurriedly at the higher elevation, blowing the tatters in a gentle, flapping motion typical of cloth in the wind. Atop the mass was a hood, barely obscuring the old, wrinkled creases of an aged woman who bore a misty, cold, bluish-white complexion. Without expression, she silently regarded the criminal—the Breaker of Laws—below, arising from the grave to taste life, before falling to rest once again.

The tattered mass of black cloth stepped off of the cliff and fell into the graveyard.

**Part III**

_Being__ in defiance of the __D__ivine Laws is nothing to envy, In fact, it is something to be avoided at any cost, should it be at all possible. Even if such a role was not undertaken willingly, and was effectively forced, the bearer of that role will know little __to none __in the way of salvation._

_ The Goddesses that created the world and its life, as well as the other divine beings who maintain it, do not recognize unfortunate coincidence, and it is in that way that they are not as just as the masses believe them to be. They will, of course, intervene with all good intentions. But intention alone is not enough to bring justice._

_ Justice comes through good judgment. This can be problematic, however, when there is no-one to judge the judges; or rather, no-one courageous and willing enough. But, as these creations of Man have found ways to challenge divine power, so must it be possible to turn the tide of history in favour of Man in more subtle ways._

_P__erhaps__,__ these are merely the delusions of one who has seen and experienced far too much of life, death, and undeath. Yet, despite all of the concepts of fate, destiny, and all of these roles that the living are expected to perform, there is one thing that all creatu__res have in common, regardless so l__ong as th__ey int__end to cling to life:__ hope. Hope for a light in the dark. And hope that that light shall not become extinguished._

Descrædia, from _Memoirs of a Dissident_

Prologue, Section III

Frozen. Frozen in time. That was what had happened to her. But who was she, exactly? Where had she come from? Was she remembering a past life? Or was it the life that she should have been living, yet, by some gross circumvention of the Law, was not?

She saw _him_. The boy in green. She knew him, and was certain of it because of the effect that his image had on her heart, which skipped a beat.

There he was, standing courageously and defiantly against the evil man in black and his hordes of demons. There he was, bearing this burden within forests, inside mountains, under water, and even through time. There he was, not looking back, ever.

That last image of him pained her heart for reasons that she could not decipher. But one thing was certain: all that she wanted to do was to reach out to him and embrace him, because he carried the world on his shoulders; because he did this without so much as an afterthought of reward from anyone he encountered; because he did this with not a modicum of sadness or regret over his destiny, which denied him the bliss of a normal life, a childhood, or even a chance to grow the way that a child is meant to grow; because he paid no mind to the fact that, even should he achieve such a chance, he would remember his journey, and would never, as a result, be able to adjust to a normal life again. She wanted so much to teach him what it meant to live that life; a life that did not demand such a bloody diet of death at the edge of honed steel.

She wanted to love him in a way that no-one ever had or ever will.

But he had gone. He had left the forest; left his little wooden home; left the trees, the vines, the grass, the smells, and the sounds. He had left the fields, the rivers, the mountains, and the kingdom. He had left the land and his friends…including her. He had gotten lost in the woods, and as a result, had left behind nearly all of his memories.

He had lost everything, and gained freedom through it. And he would never come back.

She did not want to believe it; wanted to fight against it with whatever she had left. But deep underneath, in the darker reaches of her conscience, she knew that there was no way that she and the boy could ever live in the same world. Perhaps an older, more mature version of her would have been able to accept it. Maybe he had met that person on his travels through the ordinarily-restrictive current of time. But that was not the 'her' of the now. Not yet. She was not like him; not even close, save for one similarity.

She, too, had been robbed of her opportunity to grow in her own world on her own terms. For why, she did not know, not that reason truly had anything to do with it. If it did, then fate would not be making mockeries of them all in such disgusting ways (if it _was_ fate). But here she was, being shown what her heart desired: impossibility. The cruelty of it all confounded her.

Now, she wanted to hate someone, whoever was responsible. But even the culprits were invisible, if there were any to blame specifically in the first place.

And with that, she was back at the beginning, wondering at how many times she had run in this circle. But the clarity in her memories was still marred by uncertainty. She knew that she loved the boy in green, and knew that she was supposed to be a significant part of his journey somehow. The boy's name, _why_ she recognized him, and _why_ his image tugged at her heart and caused her such pain were lost on her. Even her life before, including the people she might have known during that time, was lost on her.

Her mind was a scattered puzzle and half of the pieces for it were missing.

But she was…dreaming. She had fallen asleep again, hadn't she? She wanted to wake up; almost felt herself struggling physically to do so. But her mind was trapping her in the darkness of slumber, forcing her to endure the torturous images of this boy that she apparently loved so much.

So she stopped struggling, conceding that it was useless. Her mind wanted to tear and stab at her heart. So be it.

The tattered mass of black cloth—the old, decrepit woman—sceptically perceived, from under that face-obscuring hood, the small figure that lay before her, clothed in a plain, grey shirt and reddish-brown trousers that were so dirty and torn up that they barely managed to preserve the girl's modesty. In spite of the fact that the natural post-mortem decay should have lost her all of her flesh and blood, her skin looked smoother and more alive than that of most young women in their absolute prime condition, albeit ghostly pale. It was as if she had never even come close to death and never would. Situated atop her lean, slender, and curved body was a neck that supported a head bearing a face of pure innocence (though it was contorted into a pained, tortured expression), as well as the fullest, greenest hair the old woman had ever set her eyes on; greener than the trees and plants of all the mystical forests of the world. The girl squirmed about in her comatose slumber.

_This _was the fabled Breaker of Laws? _T__his_ was the one who must endure the divine hate?

Such an innocent child had no place among the great transgressors of history. This one's mind was a bleeding mess of images, all focused upon the hero of an age that would never come to pass within this current of time.

She was not prepared for the world, much less for Heaven or Hell.

And yet, the corrupt Bringer of Death had tried to claim her, with its evil blade and its measures of judgment. No ordinary mortals could escape its hand; this girl should have died in her own plane of existence. Instead, she selfishly and recklessly broke the Law, and tore open the gap between dimensions, a void that would never again close.

The Bringer of Death would not so easily let its quarry escape, and the Gods would not forgive. Even corrupt, the creature was still fashioned by them to complete the circle of life. Its decree, like that of its creators, was absolute. To defy it was to suffer the pains of Hell as punishment; no matter how purely one had lived their life before.

The old woman looked at the girl without expression. If there was any amount of either pity or scorn in her thoughts, it was well-hidden and impossible to determine.

The images persisted, yet the girl eventually ceased squirming. It would seem as if she, in her young age, had already accepted pain, perhaps even death.

But that could not be. Why, then, would she have gone to such great lengths to escape it? Surely, she had not done all of this by accident.

It did not matter. She would pay for her crimes all the same if she was not prepared for what was to come.

The old woman, for the first time since she had saved the girl from a bloody death at the clawed hands and teeth of the late soldiers of Ikana, shifted her attention away from the girl, surveying the drop-off that was the edge of the gaping maw of the entrance to the Temple of the Stone Tower.

This place was not much safer. A cursed wind still blew from within the depths of this Temple, out through the maw, which belonged to a giant, eerie head sculpture of tan-brown stone. Its eyes still burned with the fury of its builders, a tribe long since forgotten. Levels upon levels of murder holes still released giant boulders, made of the same hard, sharp stone that constituted the Tower itself. The ancient mechanical Beamos persisted, rotating their all-seeing eyes. Their pupils were still hot with their concentrated flame that, when released, could eat through the thickest and heaviest of armours instantly. The dead, too, served as slaves to the Tower's indomitable will, for the moaning, echoed cries of the ReDeads bounced ceaselessly across the walls.

The old woman was well aware of the Tower's sentience, and knew that she could not guarantee the girl's protection from everything that crawled within it, or the lands around it, for that matter.

Not only that, but the Bringer of Death that the girl had escaped was not the only one of its kind, and most of them upheld the Law.

She had no other choice. She would need to risk it. She would need to summon _him_.

She looked upward at the misty sky, where the sun was nowhere to be found. She spied a single bat, flying leisurely across the Tower's skyline. She stared at it for a moment, following its movement, before she raised one of the sleeves of her worn, faded garment toward it. The bat suddenly changed its course, now flying directly toward her and the girl. Elsewhere, over the walls of the Tower, more bats came pouring down into it like dark, poisoned waterfalls. They all converged in a circle, flying just above the entrance of the Temple, the old woman in the centre.

The stone walls were veiled with a hot shade of crimson as the one thousand bats screeched their musical cacophony, flying lower and lower, all the while seeming to merge together. When they were close enough to the ground, something different was materialized from their performance, just in front of the Temple's maw: a dark creature whose torso was a skeletal cage that imprisoned a golden, crystalline orb.

The cage was quickly wrapped in a black cloak that seemed to fade in and out of existence. It ended in countless tatters and rips, not unlike the old woman's own attire. Some of the bats had remained, and circled it, acting as a precautionary shield. Atop the cloak and the cage was a head that vaguely resembled that of a human, albeit deformed, and complete with a curved, green protrusion that may have been a stub of hair. It had a wide, menacing mouth that continuously bled. The blood that ran down its "chin" and dripped off of it was so acidic that it sizzled and stained the ground, leaving small holes embedded in the stone. Atop its head was a pair of wide, olive-green eyes studded with purple pupils.

The creature had no legs, and simply floated in place. Its right hand, attached to a long arm that emerged from no specific hole in the cloak, held a large, intimidating scythe wrapped in a spiral of bones that ended at the top of the weapon with the skull of a Stalchild. The scythe's blade was thick, longer than an average man was tall, likely honed enough to sever air itself, and polished to perfection; its victims could have seen their own terrified reflections within it. The old woman could see hers, and she appeared composed, though her lips had tightened in slight nervousness. The creature's eyes pierced into her soul (or what was left of it), as it produced a strange, otherworldly roar (or perhaps it was a rasp; it was difficult to determine). She tried not to grimace; the creature, she knew, would not take kindly to any form of disrespect, no matter how insignificant.

"O, great one who long ago broke the Gods' hold over him; the one known and feared throughout the lands in the Four Directions as Gomess, the very hand of death," called the old woman in a respectful, revering manner with her low-pitched, stern voice, as she lowered herself to one knee before the creature. "I have called you here to request from you a favour, from one cursed soul to another."

The creature called Gomess roared again. He was obviously possessed neither of the ability to speak, nor of much in the way of patience. Still, he remained docile, the upper end of his scythe falling into his left hand.

"In this girl rests all of my hopes," the woman continued, gesturing briefly with her head toward the small figure lying upon the stone. "However, she has broken the Divine Law, and is in grave danger. She does not have much time left. But she must survive.

"I prithee, take her; keep her safe from your brethren. In return, I offer myself to your judgment. Take what you will of me."

Gomess released a low growl, seeming to consider her offer. A small moment passed, before his left arm extended at lightning speed toward the old woman, who yelped as she flew backward off of the cliff. She was held in the air by an unknown force, where she writhed in agony. As Gomess' eyes widened into a cruel, gratified stare, she felt her life force being drained directly from her already-diminished soul. Instantly, she felt weak, as if she would literally fall apart.

It did not take long. After only a few seconds, Gomess' hold seemed to relax, and she was pulled slowly back to solid ground. Having taken his payment, Gomess' eyes turned to the sleeping child, and the bats that served as his shield flew toward her. They circled her in a manner similar to how they had circled him, levitating her off of the ground a few feet, before converging on her. She disappeared into their black mass, after which, the bats flew back to their master.

Gomess released another angry roar that echoed throughout the Tower, shaking the impregnable stone that it was constructed of. Afterward, he disappeared in the same manner that the girl had, the bats scattering to the top of the Tower's walls where they had first come in. The old woman was left to herself, on her knees, hacking and struggling to breathe.

Through her effort, she managed two words: "My…gratitude…"

She fell unconscious, the tatters of her gown still flapping in the cursed wind. 

The images of the boy in green suddenly faded away and subsided, and though she was surprised and confused, she felt relief in her heart.

But it was not to last.

What took the place of the prior images were those of hundreds upon hundreds of people she had never before seen; men, women, and children of all races and ages.

And every one of them died in some horrific fashion; bisected or decapitated by a huge scythe, turned to stone and crushed into oblivion in mid-air, eaten alive by dozens of ravenous bats bearing evil, blood-stained eyes…

All of these deaths occurred in different places, yet all of these places, for some reason, were covered completely in a crimson shadow.

Inside, she screamed in terror, frustration, and despair, beginning to struggle once again to awaken. She knew that she could have this time. But now, her physical consciousness was being suppressed by something evil, and a familiar feeling squeezed the life out of her heart. It was the feeling of a huge weight, and she cried out even harder because she knew that, somewhere, she had felt this before. The same feeling of all of the despair, troubles, and sins of the world on her shoulders alone.

More than ever before, she desperately wanted to d—

Her thoughts stopped there abruptly as a skin-rattling roar pierced into her conscience. There was nothing intelligible about it, but she felt like it said something to her; imparted a message within her mind.

"_Do not tempt me, little mortal! It is already degrading enough to bear you and your pathetic sorrows within me! Do not undermine further the contract made in your __favour__ by the Twilit Intruder, or your soul shall be mine __to slowly rend and tear asunder __until the end of time!__"_

Instantly, she ceased her struggling once more. But she didn't understand. A contract? Twilit Intruder?

Where in the world was she? Before, she thought that she was merely in a deep sleep. Now, she was someone's prisoner?

Wait. Her soul? What had it said about her soul?

She paused, and gradually, she began to remember something. A new image now came to her of a dark forest of exceedingly large trees that blotted out nearly all light, but let in just enough so that the forest floor could be seen. She was seeing this through the blurred perspective of someone who was crying and running frantically through the woods. Whoever it was, the owner of these eyes tripped over something, falling with a resounding _thud_,but did not get up. This person whimpered with the voice of a young girl. Her green hair further obscured her vision as it fell over her eyes, and she would remain that way.

It almost seemed as if she would cry herself to sleep, but an incredible hissing noise startled her out of her despondent stupor and she sat up. When she cleared the hair from her eyes, she beheld a horrific-looking creature that was essentially the upper half of a hooded, mutilated corpse atop a large spider. Off of the large spider streamed blood, along with a countless number of ravenous insects of every kind. All of them proceeded to converge on her. But the writhing corpse extended its skeletal arm toward her with an ear-wrenching screech, and all of them stopped instantly. The image blackened completely as the girl shut her eyes. When she opened them again, the corpse produced a large sickle-blade in one hand, and the scales in the other. It spoke to her in an unbearable voice, pointing its blade at her, and apparently offered her something. The girl seemed tempted to accept it, as she took a step toward the thing.

The words that it spoke afterward could not be made out, but something it said deeply startled and repulsed the girl. She broke its gaze, screaming. A screech even worse than the one before followed and the visible world started to twist and distort and crack. And then, it broke apart into millions of tiny pieces, as if it had all been nothing but a giant slab of moving glass. When the shards faded away, there was nothing but a series of strange, brightly-coloured emblems passing by, as if she was falling through an infinitely abysmal dream world that contained the very fabric of life. Then, the image abruptly disappeared. It was at its end.

It took her a moment to fathom it all, but then she understood: the owner of those eyes…that was her, crying because the boy in green had left. And that thing…

Did that thing kill her? Was that where she was? Within its—?

The roar again.

_"__Do not insult me, child!__"_

No. That was not where she was. But if not, then where—?

A low growl. Then, all the images and thoughts and worries disappeared. Everything was blank, and she asked no more questions.

A blur. Then, some clarity.

It was night-time now. But that held no importance. What were important were the two wooden, stubby legs, the feet of which covered with red shoes that curled upward at the tips, standing in front of the old woman. She could not look any higher than that, for her head would not turn. She still had no strength in any part of her body. She was completely immobile.

All that she heard was the sound of bones rattling, followed by a high-pitched, childish laugh. A pair of disconcertingly large, yellow eyes flashed in her mind, before it was all lost to nothingness.


	2. Chapter I: The Eye of the Storm

Chapter I

The Eye of the Storm

An unkind and foreboding gust of wind greeted the exhausted stranger, screaming out of the red rock-enclosed path in front of him. It was a wide gash in the hard earth ahead, but to him, it seemed narrow after the weeks he had spent crossing the great, wide open desert behind him, the sands of which, it seemed, stretched all the way to the northern and southern edges of the world, and even crept their way to this lonely canyon. But it was a shy desert, and its dusty winds were not yet brave enough to come down upon these rocks.

Or perhaps it was not insecurity, but fear. For all of its emptiness, the desert had had only the dangers of a typical wasteland: the unrelenting, abusive father that was the sun, the uncaring, ignorant, and cold mother that was the blanket of night, and the occasional out-of-place nocturnal hunter, coming out of some dwelling that, for lack of suitable building material, should not have even existed. But this canyon...

It cried in a shrill voice that should not have been heard in the living world.

But while the desert might have been a shy wooer, it was also an angry, scarred, and vengeful child, crying its own cry. _"Father! Do I not have your love? Mother! Do you not care?"_ it seemed to plead. But the only answer was more of the silent beating of the heat and the burning of the cold, and thus, it had taken to consuming the unworthy traveller to fill its void. It had nearly consumed the man who now stood at its edge.

_Crying your pardon, pitiable weeper, but I've my own answers to find_, he thought, stumbling. The heat was still unbearable even at the edge of the Gods' furnace, or whatever this place was meant to be. There would be no going back, even if the road ahead led to the gaping mouth of Hell itself.

Judging from the fell air, it did.

The man reached up to adjust his dark brown, wide-brimmed ten-gallon, now dirtied with little yellow stains as a result of all of these past days spent braving the raging sandstorms. His right hand wandered under his equally brown leather trench coat to grasp his canteen. It was caked in sand, being a thing of cloth on the outside, with a layer of leather within to keep the water from soaking into it. It tended to hang and slosh awkwardly off of the hook on his belt, but not so much at the moment; it was almost empty, and he guessed that, after this drink, it would be as much so as the desert behind him.

He raised it to his mouth, popped the cork off with his teeth (which he made sure to let fall into his left hand), and took a modest gulp, the coolness both exciting and soothing his dry throat, which immediately demanded more. As he did this, he felt something brush against the left leg of his black, worn trousers. He looked downward, spying his furry companion.

The wolf's coat was brown, and as dark and full of sand as the man's hat, but featured a bit of black around the ears, muzzle, and tail, which only seemed to make the creature compliment him further. By comparison to most wolves from the Far Eastern Lands, this one was something of a runt, but still tall enough at the back to reach his waist. The man's eyes, black as scorched volcanic rock (even retaining traces of some of the characteristic ashen grey), met with the wolf's deep, golden ones, and within them, he saw obedience, but also desire.

Ignoring the protestations of his throat, he rewarded that obedience by indulging the desire, lowering the canteen to the wolf, who had learned by now to open his mouth in response, but not before taking a sniff at it in his instinctual caution. The man pushed the canteen inward, pouring its contents down the wolf's throat as a small and exhausted, yet warm smile formed on his hard, tanned features. The wolf drank the last of the water enthusiastically, barking affectionately at the man as he withdrew the canteen and reattached it to his belt. He returned his attention to the "narrow" path ahead.

"Dangerous road ahead," he mused in a low, calm baritone, almost to himself, but in reality, toward the wolf. He glanced at his companion once more. "You reckon we might meet some of your kin?"

The wolf lowered his head slightly, a low whimper escaping his lungs. The sound was not one of fear, but of discouraged pity. His eyes, however, told a different story; he was ready for anything.

"Gods be with them," the man uttered solemnly, looking once more at the path, before he spoke to the wolf again. "The way only grows longer while we wait. Come."

With that, the man stepped forward at a moderate pace, having regained his composure from the little water he had used to sustain himself while his companion followed closely behind him. The desert howled in agony as it was abandoned once more.

In truth, the Ikana Desert did not belong to its namesake kingdom in any way other than name. In days long since passed and laid to rest, said kingdom annexed it, and there was no disputation on the matter. However, Ikana itself never established any outposts on the endless sands, much less explored it to its easterly end, having been preoccupied with other opposing forces nearer to mainland Termina and within their own kingdom. The desert was as much a waste then as it was now, the only progress for the past millennium being the gradual shifting and creeping of dunes due west.

Rumours had bred among Ikana's populace, and most of them had implied the worst: that there had been, or still was, more out there than the occasional Svarte'Keaton. Nameless evils. The animated corpses of beasts that lived even before the Goddesses' Descent. There was even a consensus that the land was cursed.

This, of course, was typical of any society facing the unknown, and most of it was likely superstition. But fables passed from the status of myth to real possibility when one could hear cries much more terrifying than the agonized howling of the winds and sandstorms rolling in from the East. It was the sound of some vicious creature or other, and it only seemed to occur while the feet of the living did not step on its dunes. There had, of course, been complaints to the Guard of Ikana, and they had sent men into the desert to investigate. There, they listened for the sound, but heard nothing but the tearing of a distant sand funnel upon the unsubstantial earth. If it was a monster, then it was a cunning one, hiding and biding its time.

Then, the kingdom fell into ruin, its people all but gone, and the canyon became as empty and lifeless as the desert. In the end, the desert had annexed the kingdom instead, and no-one was there to hear the monstrous noise any longer. Not even the pious stranger from the Far Eastern Lands had heard such a wail, nor felt a sinister presence in all his weeks braving the expanse of the desert. But as the man's feet left the very last grains, a presence disturbed and shifted the dunes once more, watching after him with pointed, bloodthirsty intent. Then came the howl from the desert's unseen and restless throat, and all was at once silent again.

The man from the Far Eastern Lands slowed to a halt and looked back at his companion. The wolf had stopped in his tracks, wheeled around, and bore his teeth at the desert that they had just emerged from, his body scrunched backward and tail upright, as if he were prepared to pounce at an invisible apparition. The man's squinted and tired expression shifted to one of sceptical uncertainty.

"Lesrahýr," he called authoritatively, though for a reason unclear, he unconsciously hushed himself while doing it.

The wolf did not respond, and only continued his low, threatening growl toward the desert. The man stared at him with that uncertain expression for a bit longer, but when his eyes followed Lesrahýr's to the endless sands, it again shifted, and the scepticism was instantly replaced by fear as something bore down on his heart and caused the hairs on the back of his neck to stand upright.

Silence. Not even the sound of the wind penetrated his ears anymore, and all that he saw were the ripples of the heated air raising from the desolate terrain, distorting the image of the dunes resting on the white horizon. That bothered him. Not likely does a desert cease to cry.

Something was there.

Automatically, and without ever taking his eyes off of the expanse of sand that stopped at the mouth of the canyon, his left hand reached into the neck of his black, silky, dirt-crusted shirt. When it came out again, it was holding a golden charm at the end of a necklace. The charm was a small triangle that was made up of three smaller triangles, all enclosing an empty space and encased in a circle, around two and a half inches wide. A tiny gleaming flare appeared on the circle's upper edge as it reflected the sun overhead. The necklace itself was a series of golden chains, each falling just short of the wideness of his little finger. With his thumb and forefinger, he held the charm out in front of him, levelling it with his chin.

He only needed to take two quick steps toward his companion before he knelt beside him. He rested his right hand just behind the wolf's ears, which perked a bit at the man's touch. He lowered his head next to Lesrahýr's, his eyes still on the desert. The wolf's eyes turned toward him and settled on his face as the man whispered anxiously.

"Come, Lesrahýr. 'Tis no longer safe to linger."

The wolf complied by once again hiding his teeth within his long lips and raising himself out of his guarded stance while the man slowly arose from his crouch. Uncertainly, both of them turned away from the desert and started in the opposite direction, glancing reluctantly backward as they did so. The man eventually returned his charm to the neck of his shirt, and the weight of this new presence became smaller as he walked**—**faster now than before**—**away from the desert. Even so, he did not dare look back again, and neither did the wolf.

Nightfall. The air was warm, even before the man had built the fire that now caused light and shadow to dance upon the ground, his face, and the fur of his companion. Still, there was a certain chill about it that cooled his spine in an unpleasant way; this feeling had grown as they tread further into the canyon, and he had the sinking feeling that it would continue to do so until it reached a breaking point. And that, he mused, would happen once they arrived at the heart of this mysterious, alien land.

He was no longer sure on which he preferred: the desert, or the canyon. The former had been hot. Incredibly hot. And there were the dangers that came with sandstorms and the corrupted nocturnal Svarte'Keaton, but otherwise, it was ordinary, up until the end. It was because of what happened at the end that he tried his hardest not to look back on the path that they had walked, thinking that he would draw something wicked. He would certainly not tread backward on that path, not even should his very life depend on it.

This, however, was a dead canyon. The wind in the desert had howled, and that, at least, was loud and direct. Here, the wind _moaned_, to varying degrees of volume and frequency, and he almost assumed that that sound was not the air, but some tortured soul drawing nearer and nearer, sensing the warmth of their flesh blood.

He saw shadows moving swiftly out of the corners of his eyes. When he turned his head in their direction for a clearer look, there was nothing there. Just more of the faceless dark blanket resulting from the black clouds overhead keeping out the stars and moonlight.

He would have felt better if his companion had not noticed anything. If there had been something, then a wolf would sense it sooner and more clearly than a man would. His companion laid there, his eyes closed. Yet, he was awake and aware, his ears having turned in all of the same directions that the man's head had. They had heard something in the dark that the ear of a man could not.

Either a stalking creature or entity was there in the canyon with them, or the canyon itself was eroding their sanity.

Sparks popped noisily out of the fire. There had not been much to build it with, but there was the occasional dead, contorted grey tree growing out of one of the rock walls. The wood was so perfectly dried and petrified that he was surprised that it hadn't crumbled into ash even without the flame to do the job. That, too, was both a blessing and a curse: he had gathered the necessary timber from these branches to build the fire, but the light from said fire revealed the shadows of these trees; horrible, disfigured claws that moved and grew longer and reached toward him greedily. Like everything else here, these shadows wanted him; wanted to drag him up and down and left and right through the tunnels of Hell, and then back again, until his gore satisfied their thirst.

That _desire_. That heavy, desperate, unfulfilled desire. To bite and rip and tear and feast; and then to scream. And then to bite, rip, tear, and feast again. Again and again, and again...

The man swallowed, glad that he could not see the sky, for he was positive that it would have appeared to spin, crack, distort, and condense around him, all at the same time.

He closed his eyes, hoping to catch his breath and calm down; but he would not find that kind of solace here. In his lids, he saw thousands of memories pass by. Each etched itself for the briefest iota of time into his memory before disappearing. The process was too fast for him to retain any of it, but the fact that all were disgusting and terrible stayed with him, and collectively, they were pushing his heart and stomach downward. With a gasp, he opened his eyes, half-expecting some dead, rotten creature to be standing over him and biting his nose off with diseased jaws. But there was nothing there that had not been there already. Just a tree's shadow, stopping just at the edge of the firelight, taunting him. He exhaled, but felt no relief. Just more moaning. The wolf opened a single eye to look at him, but he did not look back, being too distracted to notice.

This, he realized, was a land of anger, of memory, and of yearning for the days of old. He could almost hear its tormented pleading from within the wind, and through it, he could imagine what it used to be. This path may well have not always been an empty one of rock and dirt. The trees that dotted it were once alive, long ago, feeding happily on the rich nutrients in the soil. It had been a beautiful grassy passage, where the sun still pierced through the white clouds to layer said grass, as well as the numerous clusters of leaves in each tree, with a golden sheen. The air did not moan or cry, merely passing through the trees with an ambient, heart-warming tenderness. There was once a circle of life here, where the creatures did not move as intangible shadows, but as lively, visible examples of the fullness of life. It would rain, occasionally, but the sun would only take advantage of this, that golden sheen sparkling brilliantly in the aftermath of the storm. Not only that, but the place was modest, not overgrown, and could be easily traversed by man. Overall, at had been a lovely, prosperous thing.

Something had gone horribly wrong in history. Something unnatural. The man knew this, because a land does not remember and yearn for its past so strongly, and this one should not have appeared in the image that it did now. In a way, the canyon was just like the desert: jealous and hungry.

It occurred to him that he would not be sleeping in this canyon, lest he drown in the memories and never wake up again. There was too much pain in the air, and it flooded into his brain like a landslide, causing it to pulse and beat, as if he now possessed a second heart.

Without sleep, it would be that much easier to erode his will. He would become a thrall to that of the canyon. It was the perfect trap.

Sitting here to dissolve into it, then, was pointless. There was no food on his person to replenish his strength, and no sleep to partake in. If he and Lesrahýr intended to escape this place with their lives, then they would need to clear the canyon, and quickly. It would only be a matter of days before it consumed them.

He stood up, brushing himself off. The wolf raised his head to look at him. His eyes were quizzical, but through the reflection of the fire that shifted their deep, golden irises, the man could see the understanding that was dawning within them.

"We have to leave," he told the wolf in a huff. "We cannot go back, but we cannot stay here." He paused, releasing a quivering sigh, and then added: "This place will eat us alive."

She could feel a faint wind on her skin, and suddenly, she was once again aware of her own presence and consciousness. The first thing that she noticed when she opened her eyes was the throbbing pain in her head. She raised her hand, running her fingers through her forest-green, shoulder-length hair and tried to fight the agony away. Eventually, as she sat up, it began to subside.

She blinked the blurriness out of her eyes and beheld the ruin before her. She was sitting upon a high cliff, overlooking a jagged series of ash-coloured, hazy mountains far below her. Beyond that, the mountains became shorter and shorter, disappearing altogether into an ocean of the white-grey haze, which stretched even further and dissolved into a black horizon. Within that horizon, she could just barely make out the silhouettes of higher mountains and red explosions arising from their peaks. Erupting volcanoes. Above them, and stretching backward toward her, were black-grey clouds that bulged, shifted, dissipated, and reformed chaotically. Lightning crackled out of them constantly, sending a distant, cacophonic melody all throughout the landscape. She nearly jumped clear out of her pale, white flesh when one struck so close that her skin glowed and reflected the light, almost stopping her heart with its ear-splitting crash.

Except...her heart wasn't beating, and had already stopped. It had stopped as assuredly as her lungs had ceased to require air.

When she realized these things, she remembered everything: her passage through the void, her emergence from the grave, the time she spent in yet another void, unable to move on her own, and privy to all of those terrifying images...

...and that voice. That horrible, commanding voice.

She stood up, her legs shaking in uncertain fear, and backed away from the view of this atrocious, otherworldly land that had greeted her. Her back pressed painfully against a jutting rock behind her and, wheeling around, she saw the peak of a mountain that was higher than any she had ever imagined (she had never actually seen a mountain for herself before now, since the trees of the Kokiri Forest blotted out all sights of distant lands). It was made of the same ashen stone that composed the rest of what she assumed must have been Hell, and the whole of it was just like the jutting rock. If the steepness of the incline wouldn't have killed a given climber, then the rocks would have probably sliced them in half, no matter how careful they were in the effort. She had been lucky enough to have backed into one of the duller ones (then again, "lucky" was not the word that she would have used to describe herself, given her current predicament).

All of the clouds stretched and displaced themselves around the peak, forming into the eye of an upside-down vortex, the peak under the very centre of it. It was here that the electricity of the storm was most intense, writhing over and attacking the peak. She gazed up at this phenomenon in utmost dismay. What _was_ this place? For that matter, why was she here? _How_ was she here?

She tore her eyes away from the raging vortex above and surveyed the cliff. It stabbed its way out of the side of the mountain, but was a fairly small platform, being only around twenty feet in length, she estimated. Cautiously, she stepped toward the edge of it, and a small pang of dizziness took her when she saw how far from the surface she was. She must have been several high miles from it. Despite this, she was able to steady herself. She scanned the cliff, but found nowhere to go, and the mountain was too jagged and steep to climb.

She was stuck here, on this random, lonely cliff, completely at the mercy of this raging climate.

She felt the wind pick up, as well as the rising humidity. In the next few seconds, small droplets began to fall, sinking into the thick ash at her bare feet. The droplets grew larger and more numerous, until the area was being bombarded brutally and incessantly by rain. Her hair, and what remained of her tattered and ruined garments, were instantly soaked.

But she didn't care. She had closed her eyes, and the rain was now washing away the tears that squeezed through her lids. She sunk to her knees in the middle of the cliff, her skin somehow immune to what must have been the biting cold, the rain that fell hard and fast, like thousands of needles, and how the wind made it even worse, circling the mountain at incredible velocities in tandem with the cloud vortex above. She did not even notice the added element of dust grinding on her skin.

She was just a still, crying stone like the rest of the land around her.

She shifted her position so that she sat on her buttocks and the soles of her feet planted themselves flat on the ash. She pulled her knees to her chest, burying her face into them as she sobbed, not even bothering to ask herself the question of what she had done to deserve her place here in Hell. Even while she heard the faint cries of men and women below her (which she also paid little mind to), she knew that she was completely and utterly alone.

Another bolt of lightning crashed near the cliff, sending shockwaves that shook the mountain. She merely flinched.

It was as if this cursed canyon never ended. The man and the wolf had been traversing this long path non-stop with little respite for two days since the former had decided that there would be no sleep. Both of them were exhausted. The man's limbs felt weak and incapable, and his eyes burned from the strain of keeping them open and exposed to the air. The wolf was fatigued because of his growling stomach and dry tongue, which hung loosely out of his muzzle like a dead fish.

The canyon's walls had gotten quite tall as they went further inward, falling just short of the height of only the most magnificent and grandiose of structures that the man remembered from his days in the Far Eastern Lands. That, coupled with the fact that the path had thinned into an especially narrow one overlooking a deep, gaping trench granted the place more of a likeness to a valley of some sort. This valley was at least fifty feet wide, if not more. The man and the wolf had been forced to walk single-file now, with the latter at the rear.

They had run into little to no trouble on the path in the past two days. The shadows had continued to mock them in the night (the only reason they were able to continue to notice them in the dark was because the man had taken some wood along with him for use as makeshift, disposable torches, which were necessary anyway), and the chilling sensation in his spine had, as he predicted, continued to grow. However, thus far, nothing had been bold enough to attempt to stake their claim upon their flesh, blood, meat, or whatever they might have been after.

The intensity of the chill told the man that they were not very far off from the heart of the land now, or at least, the chill's source, whatever that might have been.

The valley walls had, for the most part, blocked the sun (though there was not much of a sun to block), and what remained of the sky had to be their lantern, for all the good that it was. There was no such thing as a blue sky here, apparently, for the place was always suffering under the veil of thick, tan-brown clouds. They would turn black soon, as the sun again gave up its daily effort to shine light on this lifeless canyon and sought other places to illuminate. Indeed, the man could already see the clouds dimming. They would need to move quickly. Even with a torch, he did not want to be at the edge of such a drop during the night, and night would come quickly in this trench.

The colours of dusk could just barely be made out above the valley walls, and a deep purple colour bled downward over them. It was the first time that the man had found anything about this place even remotely appealing to the eye since they had arrived there, even if it also bore something of a resemblance to a very potent poison.

But with that, the valley was darkening rapidly now, and thus, he stopped for a moment, the wolf knowingly following suit. With his left hand, he reached into one of his inner trench coat pockets, from which he took out one of his two-foot-long, makeshift torches that he had broken off from one of the trees. With his other hand, he reached toward his belt (the opposite side of where he kept his canteen) and unhooked a small, yet somewhat heavy black pouch. As he had with his canteen, he popped the cork off with his teeth, this time holding it with his mouth. Then, he reached into one of his coat pockets to procure a small brush, dirtied with a dried, thick, crusted liquid. He inserted it into the hole in the pouch. When he pulled it out, the brush was covered in more of this liquid, which he took a few moments to spread over the top of the torch. When he was finished, he scraped what remained of the liquid on the sides of the pouch's metal opening, before putting the brush back into his trench coat pocket. He pushed the cork back into the opening as best as he could with his mouth and tongue, reattached it to his belt, and then used the same hand to reach into one of his back pockets to retrieve an even smaller pouch of brown colouring that matched his trench coat and hat. He undid the string that kept it sealed, again with his teeth, carefully reached in with his thumb and forefinger, and out came a tiny piece of wood the size of a twig bearing a rough, red material at its end.

He pressed the red end of the match against his belt, and then dragged it across, causing it to ignite. A musty smell filled the air as he brought the tiny flame up to the top of the branch. That, too, ignited instantly, giving the both of them several feet of light forward and backward. He flicked the spent match into the trench, laid the torch down against the rock temporarily, retied the string around the small pouch, and shoved it back into his back pocket. He then picked up the torch and began to move forward again, the wolf following, sneezing at the musty smell that was still in the air.

It was pitch-black now, despite the man's previous hopes of clearing the path, and their pace slowed out of caution. The man hoped that it was still reasonably intact all the way through, for this valley had looked to be an incredibly long one; so long that he had not seen the end of it on a daylight glance, and still had not before night fell. It was quiet now, and the moaning of the wind was the only sound that could be heard other than the crackling of small rocks under the man's boots.

Now, more than ever, he felt as if they were being watched. The wolf let out a low, quiet growl behind him, as if agreeing to his thoughts.

The next moment, both of them dropped into a guarded stance as they heard a low noise that sounded like a tired moan. But this moan was not the distant creeping of the wind. This was close. Far too close. And it sounded strikingly human. It was followed by others of its kind; dozens of them. And then, the dislodging and falling of small rocks. The man could not tell what direction the sound came from. He cringed as the smell of decayed flesh suddenly assaulted his nostrils.

Instinctively, he reached into his trench coat with his free hand and pulled out a large, steel-butted crossbow as the volume of the wolf's growl heightened. Lesrahýr barked at something now, the dozen moans having multiplied into hundreds. He was growling downward, off of the edge of the path and into the trench. The man could not see, but trusted his companion's eyes, and lowered the torch toward the edge. There, he saw the source of the moans.

Hundreds of humanoid creatures were scaling the trench wall to the path upon which they stood. They looked like thousand-year-old corpses, their flesh having long since fallen off, exposing the cushion-like, blackened strands of muscle that, for the most part, covered their bones. Their hands, however, were not covered, their fingers having formed into sharp claws, which they used to dig into the hard, rocky crags. Their jaws were also exposed, revealing a set of teeth that were human, except that most all of them also bore four sharpened fangs. Dried, crusted blood was present on the hands and teeth of some. Most of them still possessed their eyes, which, without lids, appeared wide, gaping, and lustful. The man, in turn, was wide-eyed himself as he watched them climb toward them.

"Quickly! Forward!" he huffed to the wolf as he turned and started running at full speed, torch raised upward, and the heavy crossbow hanging at his side as he went (though this did not seem to hinder him much). The wolf followed at his heels.

The moans grew angry and intense, and they were not getting quieter. The creatures must have numbered in the thousands, and had been spread all across the valley wall. The pair would be surrounded within a matter of minutes once these animated corpses were able to hoist themselves onto the path. The man was already beginning to see skeletal hands grasping the edge, and some of them grabbed at the man's ankles and the wolf's legs.

The man aimed at, and shot a bolt into the left eye of one that had managed to raise its torso up. It cried out in a screeching drone as blood briefly poured down its cheek, before the man drove the back end of the torch into its face and quickly retracted it, which sent the abomination falling back into the abyss.

But others were making it to the top regardless, and eventually, they had all gotten their torsos above the edge. The man and the wolf were forced to hug the wall as the creatures gurgled, growled, and clawed at them as they passed.

This was going to become very ugly if the path continued like this. He doubted that they were anywhere near the end of it, but there had to be something else...some opening that they might at least have a fighting chance. Otherwise, they were going to die.

As if the Goddesses themselves had heard his plight, the path fork into a wide branch. The man, silently and anxiously thanking them, called to the wolf and turned onto it just as the creatures were getting their feet up. They limped and stumbled dumbly after them, their heads bobbing back and forth and their mouths hanging, blood seeping out of the sections of muscle on their torsos. Their raked and torn throats continued their droning, screaming chorus after them, but their putrefied legs could not come close to carrying them at their speed.

The man was slightly relieved that the noises of those creatures were getting fainter, but did not slow his pace, despite the protestation that his lungs made; not until he did not hear them at all.

It would be in the realm of fifteen minutes before the chorus faded into nothing and the man slowed to a halt, breathing heavily. The wolf, of course, was hardly fatigued; his lungs were far more suited to a continuous sprint than a man's were (though, for the wolf, running at the speed of a man was hardly a sprint).

When the man had caught his breath well enough, he looked back on the road in the direction whence they came (not that he could see anything). His voice was anxious, contemptuous, and dismayed.

"If it was unclear before, 'tis certainly clear now," he said, "This land is cursed beyond all recognition."

The wolf whimpered in similar dismay, and they were silent for a moment. That silence was broken by the man.

"We have to be swift, now. The residents of this place know of our presence. I don't know about you, my friend, but this is the last place that I would like to spend the next eternity lingering in."

The wolf barked in agreement. The man continued: "We must press on. Hone your senses and keep them sharp. I have a feeling that it has only just begun."

The wolf lowered his head in a sort of unintentional half-nod, and the both of them continued forward, treading swiftly, but quietly. The chill was now to the point of frost, and the man could tell that they were very close.

They did not get far before the man's previous statement was proven by the existence of a pair of pale, pupil-devoid, glowing yellow eyes staring at them about ten feet in front of them, just short of the edge of the light cast by the torch. Both of them skidded to a halt and the wolf instantly dropped into what was not only a guarded stance, but one of clear bloodlust. The man made note of this, nodding to himself in discouraged, sympathetic understanding.

"Found your kin," he said. The wolf replied with an angry bark, his ears flat on his head. Two more pairs of eyes appeared on both flanks of the first one. Low growls not unlike the one that the wolf was making emanated from the directions of all three. The one in the middle crept forward, eliciting another bark from the wolf.

The man was stepping backward a bit, though not as quickly as the Wolfos converged on them. A grey paw stepped into the light, followed by a dishevelled muzzle and head, tongue hanging freely and dripping hot, miasmic saliva onto the dirt. It was shorter than Lesrahýr and highly emaciated, so much so that its ribs could clearly be made out under what was left of its coat. By the man's standards, however, it was still quite imposing. It reeked of decay and graveyard soil. Its pack mates, once they, too, could be seen, were much the same, albeit smaller. The one at the front must have been the pack alpha. They spread out in opposite directions in a semicircle, before stopping and taking a similar stance to Lesrahýr's. Both of them focused on the man's companion, whereas the alpha had its eyes set on the abominable wielder of the torch that brought the unthinkable into its domain.

The man eventually ceased to step backward and stood his ground, torch forward and crossbow aiming at the muzzle of the alpha, which bore its teeth menacingly. Another bolt had been passed through the bow's magazine and latched automatically into the stock.

"You have hunted in the very maw of Hell," the man said softly to the alpha before him, "and now, I release you. Gods be with you."

A tiny crack appeared in the alpha's mouth as its teeth parted, and at that very millisecond, its pack mates leapt for Lezrahýr, who was already doing the same, in turn. He collided, mid-air and teeth-first, with the one on the left, while the other one graced him with its paws, but had overcompensated in its jump and tumbled onto the ground. Meanwhile, the man had timed his sideways fall perfectly, letting fly his bolt into the shoulder of the alpha as it leapt and passed over him. A yelp escaped its throat as it rolled on the dirt, inadvertently tearing out fur, flesh, and tendon where the bolt had made contact.

The man only had one chance at this, and speed was essential. He dropped his crossbow, rolled onto his feet, and, taking only three swift steps toward the laying alpha, shoved the torch into its face. It yelped again, louder this time, as the shaggy fur on its muzzle was set aflame. The man let go of the torch, and, with hands swift as lightning, procured a hunting knife from behind his pitch pouch. He used his free hand to grasp the alpha's tail (thus eliciting an enraged howl from it). The alpha tried to pull away, and would have had the strength to, but there was no time: the man was too quick in slicing off its tail, staining the ground with thick, black blood. A high-pitched, agonized howl flew forth from the alpha's lungs as its body combusted and was consumed by blue flame that seemed to rise and flow like a calm river in slow motion toward the night sky. Pulling the torch away, the man fell backward as the Wolfos' spirit was forcibly exorcised from its body, releasing a small shockwave in the process.

The man spared no time to turn his head in search of Lesrahýr. He spotted him, still engaged with one of the alpha's pack mates, the other lying off to the side with one of its hind legs bitten off. It was flailing its paws in the air frantically in pain and shock. Meanwhile, Lesrahýr sunk his teeth into his quarry's neck, and, with incredible jaw strength, flung it at least ten feet into the rock wall. The creature whimpered as it fell to the ground with a resounding thud, but quickly regained its composure, ready to have at it with Lesrahýr again. But the man had sheathed his knife and retrieved his crossbow. Torch forward to clarify his target, he let fly with another bolt. It ripped through the base of the Wolfos' tail before it could react, and, with the same cry that had escaped the alpha, it collapsed in a burning heap. The man braced himself as the shockwave came, keeping his footing this time.

Lesrahýr had assumed a precautionary stance against the last Wolfos writhing on the ground before them. The man hung his crossbow on his belt and unsheathed his knife again. A single drop of blood escaped its edge as he walked toward the pitiable demon. It snapped at him scornfully when he stood over it, but he brought his boot down firmly upon its muzzle, restraining it. Frowning, he grasped its tail and severed it just as he had the alpha's.

Another cry, another conflagration, another shockwave. The man stumbled backward, and so did Lesrahýr, but both found their footing. They watched the creature burn, and Lesrahýr whimpered despondently. The man made no noise save for the sheathing of his knife (which he would have cleaned, but could not, for lack of a suitable cut of cloth to do so). His face was blank, but his eyes were grave as the blue flames danced within them.

Such an unfitting end to what may have once been proud creatures that had once lived in harmony with a beautiful land. But at least these had kept to their pack mentality, showing strategic camaraderie (if ineffective, in this case), even so spent past their expiration that, despite the Law, and by some trick, some twisting of nature, had not been enforced.

Where were the Gods? Where were the individuals chosen by destiny?

He did not know. What he did know was that he had ceased to detect the protective influence of the Guardian Deity of the East months ago, perhaps longer. Even those not attuned to the spiritual climate, as he and his kind were, had felt it, if only subconsciously. Life suddenly lost its fullness, and had become an inconvenient state of being, more than a gratuitous blessing. He had no estimate to _exactly_ how long ago it had been. Such things were difficult even for him to determine, especially given the ambiguity of time. For all he knew, it was not a matter of time itself, but the _speed_ at which time passed; perhaps it was moving so quickly that men, himself included, had failed to hear death's calling. He had thought that it had taken weeks to pass through the desert. Could it have been centuries, in reality?

But the wounds were deepening, quickly and profoundly, with every passing second, regardless; he felt their impression on his heart, as if someone had taken a razor and carved it into the image of this canyon.

If the other deities were as absent as this one was, then it was not just the East that was in danger. The wounds would continue to fester abroad, the world would collapse, and Hell would swallow it whole. It would return to the chaotic state that it had been in millennia ago, before the Goddesses' Descent.

The Gods' hold on history was weakening, and the slightest push would break it completely. But who was responsible? What kind of hate would drive someone to attack the circulation of the world's lifeblood so recklessly?

Or had the Gods simply turned their back on it?

No. He refused to believe that. The Gods knew better than the living what the concept of responsibility was, so they did. They would not have forgotten their role.

Even so, his hand, moved by the slightest inkling of doubt, wandered to his shirt, grasping at the charm hidden under it.

He turned toward his companion now. He was still suffering from the image of the Wolfos burning to ashes. They had been twisted and corrupted beyond redemption, but they were still his kin, despite having been born half a world, and perhaps even half an eon, apart. The man's brows curved and turned upward while his mouth pressed into a straight line.

"Mourn their unlife, but praise their end, my friend," he spoke tenderly, "for they were not beyond salvation; they will find solace now."

The wolf whimpered again, but his eyes and nose lowered thoughtfully, and the man knew that he would understand fully in due time, when the skirmish and the dying were not so recent.

The man surveyed the path. All three of the Wolfos had burned almost completely away, leaving charred shells that only bore the vaguest of resemblances to the bodies that they once were.

"Gods be with you," he whispered once again, before his eyes suddenly shot backward on the path as the faint sound of human moans crept through the air. He cringed.

"They are still following us," he said aloud, "Their pace is quickening."

He looked grimly at the wolf, whose eyes only answered with righteous determination, having shaken off the despondency that had come with the death of the Wolfos pack.

"With all haste, we must fly, and quit this place. No more walking; no more delay. You are unharmed?"

The wolf barked a resounding, _"__Not in the slightest!__"_

"Then it is decided. Run!"

And they ran. And they ran hard.

_"Climb."_

She raised her head off of her knees, opening her moisture-blurred eyes, and slowly arrived out of her despair-blinded stupor. Tears could have easily stained her cheeks had the place not still been suffering under the torrential downpour.

_"Climb."_

She stood up, not feeling at all the force of the wind (or perhaps the wind, in fact, _had_ no force, and the rain, in fact, _lacked_ any wetness; perhaps this was all mind projection on her part; she had begun to consider this, but had lost it when she heard this voice in her head).

_"Is someone there?" _she thought, responding to this voice that sounded like that of an old woman.

_"Climb," _it answered simply, seemingly ignoring her question.

Climb? Climb what? Where? The mountain?

But the mountain was too jagged and steep. She would die horribly if she tried.

_"Climb."_

The voice was weakening, as if the owner of it was dying slowly.

She looked around questioningly, trying to find whoever was speaking to her. It was a futile waste of effort, she knew. There was only the cliff, unless she considered the screaming voices below. But she could see nothing of their owners through the haze that seeped and flooded into every winding ditch.

Finally, her eyes fell on the mountainside. It did not look any different than it had before (unless one counted the slippery appearance that it now took, on account of all the rain).

_"Climb,"_ the voice insisted, this time trailing off, and she knew that it would not speak again.

She found herself frustrated. Climb the mountain? How? There was no way —

But then, there was something different; something changing. At the midpoint of the cliff's base, where it met the mountainside, a narrow portion of the rock wall began to fade away, revealing a stair. A steep one, but a stair nonetheless. The fading of the rocks continued infinitely upward, leaving a pathway to the peak of the mountain. She stood dumbstruck.

Entranced, and without prior input from her mind, her body moved forward, but cautiously, as if the rocks might suddenly reappear and impale her when she reached the wall.

But they did not. The path remained, and she reached out with a quivering hand to touch one of the stair steps. It was a stair, no doubt, but still very steep. She would not be able to simply ascend it with her feet alone. She would need to scale it.

She did not falter, though. Already, she had seen enough of this place, and a small ember of hope wandered its way back into her heart; hope that, whatever awaited her at the peak of the mountain, it would lead to her leaving it, hopefully for good.

She began with her right foot, hoisting herself up; the first step in her long ascent to the eye of the storm.

The man was resigned to assume, at this point, that the night would not quit this time. This time, it may have cast itself as a permanent blanket over this cursed canyon. It was convenient, of course, for its inhabitants. Most of them seemed to lack eyes in the traditional sense, yet could easily navigate themselves through the dark, whereas he ran blindly through these paths that were madness-incarnate. Did that make him the resident madman?

Who could say? He wanted nothing better than to see the end of it, especially since the walls of the path, in their haste, had widened and disappeared into the night. They were now running through an open field in the canyon (a wide crater, perhaps, judging from the way it seemed to slope downward a bit, though his guesses were worth about as much as a rusty knife in a fight with ten thousand archers), and they were being pursued closely. Canine skeletal hunters were bounding behind them in long strides, inviting angry growls from the wolf. The man had not a clue as to when, exactly, they had begun to follow them, for they had appeared out of the gloom in two pairs at both of their rear flanks.

The man was not particularly focused on the chill in his spine, which was now like a frozen wildfire, but he could almost swear that they were nearing the source. Now, it felt like a current passing through his entire body, spreading beyond his spine. It was degrading, and he felt soiled by it, but somehow, it also fuelled his stamina.

He was a novice in the art of sorcery, knowing few, if any, incantations that would assist them in a tangible way in the current situation. But he had spent some time looking into its mysteries and training his reflexes, drawing on the natural energy around him (or what little of it had remained in the Far Eastern Lands). He had never gotten further than perhaps a slight enhancement in his running speed.

But now, the energy emanating from the source of that chill was spilling into him. It was an evil current, and he knew that, were he not careful, it could corrupt him in much the same way that the Wolfos had been corrupted. But they were being chased by a pack of Stalhounds, who, even for lack of any muscular mass on their bones, still possessed the speed that their legs had granted them in life, and he would not be able to stand against them, much less outrun them drawing on his naturally-endowed physical capabilities alone.

So he drew on the dark energy while centring his mind. He fed the energy into his legs and lungs, amplifying the strength of the former and increasing the air intake and stamina of the latter (lest they collapse from overexertion). It burned him, both because the body was not meant to be forced beyond its limits in this manner (much less without extensive practice and mastery of the arts that ordinarily took years, decades even, to achieve), and because the malevolence of the energy conflicted with his very nature.

But that did not matter now. It was keeping them alive. Him, because he was giving the Stalhounds something to chase. They would not catch him so easily now. Lesrahýr, because it allowed him to quicken his own pace without leaving his companion behind. Up until now, he had been moderating his speed out of consideration for the limitations of a man's body. He was more than a little surprised—and somewhat suspicious—to see this man running as fast as he, himself, could, but he shared the man's view that the concerns associated were not important right now.

Even with the augmented speed, Stalhounds were quick opponents, and though they were having considerably more trouble following now, they were still keeping up, and perhaps even gaining. Soon, they would be in a suitable position to take them both out of commission.

They roared a rasping, gurgling roar of a dog growl at them, exposing fully the razor-honed teeth upon the split jaws within their elongated skulls. What little hair they had retained lined their thick, sectional spines, each strand flapping up and down as they ran after their prey. They passed in and out of the torch light, yet always, their bright, aquamarine orbs of eyes gazed upon them from within their otherwise empty sockets. A thin layer of skin still clung to their ribcages, soaked by blood as a still-beating heart still pumped it outward to nowhere (which technically meant that, in medical terms, the creatures were still among the living, the man realized with passing interest). This blood seeped out of these creatures, leaving a red trail behind them.

The forward of the two on the man's left flank apparently experienced a sudden bout of boldness as it glided toward him, snapping at him with its strong, hard jaw. The man sidestepped mid-run just in time to prevent the thing from taking his arm off, and retaliated by driving the back end of the torch (which, he was amazed was still burning by this time) into its "face". It let out a breathy growl as it rebounded out of the torch light and stayed there, having learned its lesson. Its head was still turned toward the man in angry bloodlust, and it roared viciously.

The others learned as well, and kept back, but picked up their pace, the two at the front gaining a forward advantage over them.

_They're trying to __cut us off and box us in__,_ thought the man, _for the __two at the back to __take us down._

The larger issue with Stalhounds was that they were also very intelligent, especially as a pack (which, thankfully, was a rare sight; usually, they hunted in pairs instead, and the man and the wolf had just happened to have been unlucky enough to attract the attention of a collective), rivalling or even surpassing Wolfos in hunting effectiveness and strength. But they were not so intelligent that they could not be outsmarted, and the man's mind was working. It would need to work quickly. He noted that the forward Stalhounds were in front of them now, their heads turned back in case either the man or the wolf decided to make an opportunistic attack, while the backward Stalhounds' heads had lowered slightly, as if ready to pounce.

This was not going well. They would make their move in the next couple of seconds. A preparatory and anxious roar from behind him confirmed the man's thoughts.

Then, it came to him. They want to cut them off, which would involve halting them, and then feasting.

Why not give them what they wanted, albeit prematurely?

"Lesrahýr! On my word...halt!" yelled the man, _almost_ positive that Stalhounds could not comprehend Manspeak like his companion could. The wolf barked uncertainly, but nodded.

The man pulled out his crossbow, clicked a small metal button on its side, and detached the magazine. He replaced it with another one from one of his trench coat pockets. He needed the help of his torch-wielding hand to do this, which brought said torch dangerously close to his face, though he did mind it enough to keep it from being a new issue atop the ones already present.

Out of the bolt loaded on the stock of the crossbow poked a small, paper-thin fuse no longer than the man's little finger. He lowered the torch to it, and it ignited in a sizzling, threatening noise. Three seconds now, he estimated, and the Stalhounds would have them.

Not on his watch.

"Now!" he yelled.

Both the man and the wolf skidded on the ground, their feet dragging and building up tiny mounds of dirt. The Stalhounds at the back instantly flew past them. It took them all one and a half seconds to react to their prey's sudden change of pace and they, too, began to skid.

_Perfect_, thought the man, who raised his crossbow at the closest Stalhound on the left. He squeezed the trigger and fired, lodging the ignited bolt in its right hind quarter. In the same second, another bolt of the same type locked itself into the stock. He ignited that, and shot it into the Stalhound on the right, penetrating its ribcage. Both of them roared in frustrated rage, but both were cut short when the gunpowder within the tips of the bolts ignited. The two explosions blew them apart into hundreds of bone fragments, the remains of their few preserved organs splattering all over the landscape. Some of it glued itself onto, or bounced off of, the man's trench coat and the wolf's fur.

After three more seconds of dragging, they finally slid to a halt. So did the remaining two Stalhounds ahead of them, who immediately turned around and bounded toward them in a furious head-on attack, roaring as they went. The man grimaced. He would not be able to take them out with explosive bolts where he stood now. They would be upon them before they could explode, and when they did, all of them would die.

Lesrahýr would have to take one of them, at least. He was not too keen on the idea of his companion risking himself in the face of a Stalhound's jaw; with enough pressure, a bite from one of these creatures could literally shatter his back in at least two places, and that was being optimistic. But he had faith in his companion, and had no choice but to go through with it (though, in the back of his mind, he did say a quick prayer).

"Take that one, Lesrahýr!" the man shouted, gesturing to the Stalhound on the left. "But be mindful!"

The wolf barked twice, once in acknowledgment to the man's word, and next toward his quarry, who, along with its pack mate, was now but a mere twenty feet away, judging from the dim glow of their orb eyes.

The man broke into a forward run again. The next second, his opponent had leapt toward him. The man dropped backward onto his right side, cringing when his left elbow collided with one of the Stalhound's hard, bony, flesh-deficient paws as it passed over him in an almost identical manner to how the alpha Wolfos had. The pain was bad, and it caused him to let go of the torch, but he managed to grab it out of the air again just as it had hovered five inches from his fingers. He turned over on his stomach, still dragging on the dirt, and aimed the crossbow. His drag was making it difficult to bring the Stalhound reliably into his sights, for his arm grinded over the rough terrain, causing it to wobble excessively.

_Gods guide this shot_, he thought, and pulled the trigger. The bolt flew into the beast's neck just as it was landing. Its head snapped to the side from the impact. In the next second, the Stalhound was turned around and dashing toward the man, but it was too late. The man shielded his eyes as its forward section blew off into dozens of tiny pieces of bone and flesh, leaving nothing but its hind quarters and part of its spine, which were launched backward. They rolled on the dirt and then came to a halt uselessly.

Meanwhile, out beyond the light of the torch, Lesrahýr's teeth were sunk into the remaining Stalhound's neck area, and both were rolling around on the earth. The Stalhound made two attempts at finding the wolf's shoulder with its jaw, before succeeding on the third try. It bit down, and Lesrahýr howled in pain. This, however, only drove him further, and he answered the Stalhound's jaw strength with his own. The Stalhound roared in defiance, followed by agony in the next second. Then, silence as its neck was snapped. Its jaw fell limp, lifting the pressure from the wolf's shoulder. The aquamarine orbs in its sockets faded into nothing, and Lesrahýr tossed the thing away from him. He instantly fell over as it landed, emitting a rattle as it met the ground.

The man, who was close enough to it to see it, lodged a bolt into the middle of its ribcage and dropped backward when it exploded. It had been dead, but he would not take chances with such creatures.

When bone and flesh ceased to roll across the dirt, the man scurried to his feet and ran to his companion, who lay there with shoulder bleeding profusely. He was whimpering in pain. Holding the torch close to the wound so that he could see, he put his crossbow away and used his now free hand to lift Lesrahýr's corresponding leg off of the ground a tad. This invited a slightly louder cry from the wolf, but not much else. Judging from the way the wolf instinctively pulled his paw away, he concluded, with some relief, that the Stalhound had not managed to break his companion's shoulder (though that could have been the case had it been allowed to bite down the way it had for but a second longer). He would, however, need to clean the wound and patch it up.

The man took the bottom portion of his shirt and tore a large piece off of it.

"Hold still," he uttered tenderly. Passing the shirt-rag to be held against the torch with the little finger of his other hand, he reached into the wound. Fighting back the pang of heartsickness that arose when his companion whimpered louder, he dug a bit deeper and, carefully, pulled out the Stalhound tooth from the wound and flicked it away. He then used the shirt-rag to wipe away the excess blood that was seeping into Lesrahýr's fur. Tossing that aside, he tore another rag from his shirt, wrapped it around the wound, and tied it into a devil-knot. The rag was visibly stained with blood, but the seepage stopped just short of the edge of it. The man watched this with nervous intent, and then exhaled in relief.

"Can you stand, my friend?" he asked. The wolf rolled onto his feet. Though his shoulder faltered a mite under his weight, the wolf regained his composure in the next second, proceeding to lick the man's face. The man chuckled affectionately, sparing a moment to scratch behind the wolf's ears, before rising to his feet.

"Well then. If you can still run well enough, we should continue," the man said, to the slight disappointment of the wolf. The man noted this with an adoring smile, adding: "There will be a time for thanking later. Here is not the place for't, I'm afraid."

Adjusting his hat (which had tipped over considerably, given the speed at which he had been running) the man scanned what little of the area that he could see, and was relieved to see the sky brightening, if only infinitesimally (but still proving wrong his previous fears). The sun had begun to rise, and it would peek over the canyon's rock faces in an hour or two.

The man could now just barely make out an enormous silhouette of impossible height rising out of the darkness in front of them. It was taller than the valley walls; taller than the tallest building in Vegatria, the capital of Lyrä, from whence he had been born and come. He looked upon it with a heavy heart.

This was the source of the chilling current. This was the nucleus of the land's disease. This was the Stone Tower.


	3. Chapter II: Salvation

Chapter II

Salvation

Another bolt brutally ripped its way out of the clouds and attempted to eat through the side of the mountain. It failed, of course. The stone seemed, for all intents and purposes, indestructible, and the bolt did little more than charge the rocks a bit, causing them to glow a brilliant white veiled by a shade of blue so light that it may as well have been turquoise. Tiny arcs of electricity streamed out of the glow, some toward surrounding rocks, others back toward the clouds.

She was surprised that she found it a beautiful sight, especially after being convinced that nothing in this land could have such terms applied to it. But then, beauty was subjective; perhaps this place _could_ sanely be thought of as beautiful…

Then she remembered the screams below, _sensed_ the toxicity of the air (she could not breathe it, and for once, she was glad that she was "dead"), and listened for but a second to the musical ensemble that this place had to offer, and quickly corrected her thoughts.

She had been climbing for the past two hours (or so she estimated, not that she thought that time really made a difference here) and, looking up the stair to the peak, could swear that she still had half of the slope to clear. This would normally have left her woefully disheartened, if not for the fact that the thought of remaining here any longer deeply terrified her. The fact that she had already been here for as long as she had was enough. The airborne toxin did not affect her, but she still felt soiled, as if it would adhere to her skin and dissolve her into a rotted, ranking puddle of dross. Just more pestilence in a pestilent land.

Her left foot slipped and lost the ash-ridden stair step that it had been on, and the echo of her half-screamed gasp bounced off of the mountainside as her fingers glued themselves to the equally ash-ridden step above her and held on for dear life. Her foot kicked desperately in the air for a second before finding its place again, and she let out a (literally) breathless sigh, her eyelids shaking closed and her lip quivering. When she had calmed down enough, she pressed on, continuing at a slower pace at first, but finding her previous urgency after a couple of minutes. All the while, her eyes stood pointed at the peak of the mountain, both determined and nervous.

The faint light of the Sun, though heavily filtered by the gloomy clouds overhead, revealed the landscape.

It was indeed a crater, though not a terribly steep one. It was overall too smooth to be natural. But so large! It must have been half a league across.

But what madness would create such a massive depression? And what was the meaning of the scarce remnants of crossed metal rods lining the edges of the walls that defined the boundaries of the crater? They could just barely be made out, and altogether bore the likeness of a cage. At this, the man was unnerved. Should his feet, and that of his companion, be treading over this expanse so casually?

And that Tower…

It loomed overhead at what the man thought was the southern edge, stabbing upward through the rock and disappearing through the cloud cover. It cast a fell, red shadow that cut a wide swath through the crater. Except…

There was no ray of sunshine behind it. How was such a thick shadow possible under such circumstances? Moreover, how convenient that it was being cast straight in their direction.

The man was breaking out in a cold sweat, and he found himself panting lightly. He felt…weak; weighted down, hindered, and somewhat sick to his stomach. He walked upright, but was slowing to a lazy pace. The wolf eyed him with curious confusion. Had the man not placed such an emphasis on haste but moments earlier?

Nevertheless, they were moving, and approaching the centre of the depression. Their flight over the crater with the Stalhounds on their heels had not even brought them halfway across it.

The man was practically inching his way forward now, still panting. He tried to blink, and found that he could not. His eyes were rooted on the giant stone structure ahead. His brain throbbed, and the image of the tower began to divide, creating a twin, albeit far less opaque. At the same time, his peripherals were blurring, morphing, and stretching toward the centre point of his vision, as if everything around him was being drawn into, and devoured by, a hole pierced through time and space.

A second copy of the tower, as transparent as the other one, detached itself from the source and moved in the opposite direction. Soon, he was seeing more of them, moving diagonally, horizontally, vertically, and every direction in between, overlapping the jagged, red mess that was the rest of his world. A low note sounded within his skull, harsh, dissonant, and painful. The man felt the excruciating sensation of his ears threatening to explode, but did not react. Instead, his mouth dropped dully. His eyes were rolling backward and his lids were fluttering in indecisiveness halfway over them. But he did not see the darkness that his lids should have granted.

Instead, he continued to see the mess, and the tower, and all of its faint little children, so numerous as to appear to be dancing around this distorted canvas. The mess was the water, and they were the fish leaping through it; a pleasing, hypnotic performance. Such a perfect thing; it could go on to the very end of time and never get old. And he wanted to dance with them, become friends with them, and chat with them about how to fix the world and about the prevalence of wind and dust. Yes, he would make their acquaintance, would run all the way through the glazed void ahead to the edge of the world, beyond the stars in the sky, to the ever-mysterious blackness, and to the very end of the universe, where all the answers lay, and with no more questions to sour them. Just a fine, dandy time in the end of days and nights, free from the past, present, and future. Yes, he would fly through that void, faster than sound; faster than light; faster than death could run to catch him. He would laugh in its face, mock it for being too slow, and boast about how fast he was going. He would move through time, whether it stopped or not, and know all things, laughing again in delight. And then—

The red mess, the tower children, and the void were swept away with sudden violence, leaving nothing there. The man screamed as his brain pulsed and beat a single painful beat many times stronger than his heart, and in the next second, he felt himself flying through the air. It would not last long; his shoulder hit the dirt hard. He was briefly deafened in addition to being blinded, but in another second, he could hear the faint barking of a wolf.

"Lesrahýr?" he felt himself mouth. He blinked several times and the image of the brown crater around him faded into existence again. Indeed, his companion was barking…but not at him.

He shook the disorientation out of himself and looked forward. His breath caught in his lungs as a giant, sandy, jagged mass of a head at the end of a wide, thick, worm-like body protruding and curving out of the dirt in the centre of the crater confronted him. There were no visible eyes, and a low, long, and drawn-out grunt was emanating from it. It hovered but three yards ahead of him; a thing sixty feet across and twenty-five feet high.

A dark line appeared down its centre as both sides of the head parted with a harsh crackle. In it, he saw teeth; lots and lots of teeth jutting out of a wide, circular maw that was, overall, steeper than the crater around them. At the bottom, in the centre of it all was an eye larger and taller than the man was. It was a magnificent thing, coloured a deep blue at the edges and becoming brighter toward the black-bisected centre. In it, the man could see the colours shifting, like water in an aquarium.

Its one-meter-wide, two-meter-long, and inwardly-curved pillar-like teeth lined its bipartite jaws, which had by now fully opened. Its eye's pupil dilated for the merest fraction of a second, and what followed was a low, distorted bellow that hit the man so hard that it may as well have been a bird with an enormous wingspan slapping him down and laying him flat on the ground. He felt the earth tremble at the sound, and, wincing, he covered his ears as he stared in fear and awe at the maw, the rows of teeth within beginning to rotate and grind against each other in opposing directions. It was here that the man could imagine himself within that maw, being brutally eviscerated, swallowed, and sent bouncing down far into that long, long body. Out of the corner of his eye, he spied the wolf, having ceased his barking and taken to putting his head to the ground, his ears flat and his body shaking at the sound of this monstrosity's thunder.

The creature ended its performance, and as its jaws clamped shut, its head lifted and its body followed. The man could see the three pairs of doorway-like gills in its underside, vibrating and flapping as air passed into them. Dirt still ran off every nook and crag of its grey-brown body, so rigid and protruding that it may as well have been a miniature, flexible mountain range. All of these mountains rotated to and fro.

An Elder Molgera; that was what it was, and it was among the greater beasts of the legends of the man's homeland. He had known that they truly existed, but never in all his time spent growing up did he ever think that he might see one, much less stare into the maw of one.

So too did he hope not to, for this was not a creature that could be bested; not by him, nor the wolf, nor an army of ten thousand strong men.

He scurried to his feet and began to charge forward in the direction of the centre of the crater, where the Elder Molgera's body sprouted forth like a giant stone tree. It began to rise, taking large clumps of dirt with it.

"_Lesrahýr! Fly!"_ the man called, but the wolf was already at his side, bounding next to him. The Elder Molgera's head crashed into the ground behind them, narrowly missing its mark. The other end of it still had yet to emerge from the ground. The man was amazed to realize that even his land's legends had underrated the scale of these beings. Its body was at least fifty feet wide. Or was this merely an outstanding specimen?

They passed its rising body, putting a few yards of space between them. But where would they run? For that matter, how _could_ they run? There was no way that they could outrun it, assuming that it would even give chase. All that it really had to do was to burst out from underneath them and swallow them whole.

But this one was apparently in the mood for a chase, for the man heard another crash from behind them. He stole a backward glance and was sure; it was flying toward them, maw gaping and eye blazing a brilliant blue fire.

He had no choice; he would need to do it again, or they would surely die horribly.

He called upon the stream of power that was the essence of the tower, still washing over the land and filling up the crater with a maligned hunger. Like before, he felt strength in his muscles, which he refocused into his legs and chest.

But would it be enough?

He could feel the sound emanating from the Elder Molgera's maw hitting his back and transmitting his previous imaginings of being ground into oblivion inside of it into his mind again. The wolf could feel it as well, but he, again, favoured the man with an almost distrustful look, apparently still confounded over the fact that he could move so swiftly. But, like before, that did not matter for the moment, and neither did his wounded shoulder, screaming out at him in outrage over such heavy use of it so soon.

The man felt cold, small, and claustrophobic as the darkness of the beast's maw fell over them. It was so very close. One decisive snap of those jaws and they would be gone from this world instantly. He could hear those rotating rows of teeth; the sound of two stones grinding against each other. Oh, how it was roaring, and how the cacophony rung in his ears! So close…

But the tower was near. The man could not believe it, but he was trying with all his might to "escape" into it; to find refuge in the origin of this land's woes and the gradual erosion of his sanity.

But there was no choice. One-hundred yards…

Both of them jumped when they heard a thunderous _cla__p_ behind them. The Elder Molgera had snapped its jaws, thinking that they had been close enough, its jaw teeth dragging over each other with the noise of guillotines dropping. The man did not want to know how close it had come.

Sixty-five yards.

The creature let out another bellow, this time higher-pitched. The man's ears throbbed and suffered under the sonic assault. It was incredibly difficult to keep his footing under the disorientation.

Forty yards.

It snapped again, and the man felt a brief, yet incredibly strong pull at his trench coat, which had somehow been ensnared lightly enough for him to snap it away. He was glad that Lesrahýr was just a few feet ahead of him, or he would have had his tail taken off. So very, very close…

Twenty-five yards.

The Elder Molgera let out one last bellow, snapping its jaws closed one more time. The man felt the slightest push at the back end of the brim of his hat, before the beast's head turned sharply upward and to the left. As it went up, the mini-mountains of its body just barely missed and passed harmlessly over the man's head. But neither of them ceased to run. They ran recklessly into the large, dark, half-circular opening that was the tower's base entrance. The inviting darkness swallowed them, and they disappeared instantly from outside view.

The Elder Molgera narrowly avoided crashing into the tower, turned around, and backtracked over the crater's skyline. It held itself just below the clouds, its length greater than the radius of the crater. It dove down toward the earth again, and its final, frustrated boom echoed all throughout Ikana that day.


	4. Chapter III: Swallowed by the Paradigm

Chapter III

Swallowed by the Paradigm

The man sat in the dim gloom of the wide, blue-stoned entrance hall, back against the high wall that seemed to disappear into the darkness above. He was reminded somewhat of the valley that he and his companion had crossed, for they were similar in that his eyes could not cut through that thick veil. The difference was that the darkness was above him this time, and indeed, he half-expected more of those sorry, incomplete creatures from the valley's chasm to claw their way downward at him again, crying their desperate, needy, tormented cries.

Instead, he got something worse: silence. Complete and utter silence. The atmosphere was so thick that it masked his breathing, and even the breathing of the wolf, who sat tentatively beside him, staring down the hall ahead of them. It disturbed him, made him feel as if he had crossed the thin line between life and death without even walking it first.

But at least one could see in here without the aid of torch light. There was nothing to illuminate it, yet somehow, the room seemed to react to the man and the wolf, granting them a thirty-foot line of lesser light in all directions. It was a grim one, but suitable, all the same.

The man would have found himself wondering exactly how tall the tower was, or even how high the ceilings of its rooms truly were had it not been for his dismal, almost blank expression as he stared at the ground, his chin brought low by the weight that was the irrevocable realization that his stomach was thoroughly empty and his mind was full to bursting: filled with dancing towers and smeared tapestries that mocked his ordinary perception of the world around him. Because of it, he had nearly strolled like an ignorant child into the teeth of one of the most legendary and deadliest creatures known to the world of man. The only reason that he had survived long enough to fly from an inescapably dooming maw and into the questionable, sinister, and dread-ridden jaws of another was because Lesrahýr had been quick to sense his companion's astounding foolishness, wrestle him down by the arm with his muzzle, and fling him out of the way.

This tower was not merely some object of arcane power that tainted the land around it; it was a sentient, conniving thing, perhaps possessed of a diseased spirit of some kind that carried a will.

A seductive will of a fiendishly pessimistic visage disguised as an optimistic doorway to an accomplished understanding of providence.

It would have made him laugh, had he not been slowly dying both from it and the way that his stomach twisted, churned, and turned inside-out. How many days had it been since his supplies and water had run out and they had begun their journey to this altogether damned place? Three? Four?

Either way, they did not have much time left. Lesrahýr was not showing it, but the man knew that he must have been suffering even more.

What he did know was that he could not afford to draw on the tower's aura again. He felt…tainted…almost halfway through the decomposition that a corpse would take. His muscles, though useable, were losing their feeling, as if his very nerves were dissolving. When he swallowed, the dissatisfying, viscous liquid went down a dull, scratchy throat made of rough branches encased in stone, and though he felt no unevenness in his bosom, his heart was, quite simply, beating slower. It was as if time had been isolated around him and slackened as part of some jest made in very, very poor taste.

He did not even want to think about his own mind.

He lifted his head and looked over at Lesrahýr, reached his hand out, and tentatively stroked his fur, which appeared to be black in this gloom. The wolf looked back at him blankly.

"I'm sorry, old friend," said the man, his voice weak, "I have been losing myself in this place."

The wolf made no sound, but stretched his neck to lick the man's face. The man smiled a fatigued smile, circles under his eyes. It disappeared when he stood up. Stepping to the middle of the hallway, he faced the void ahead.

"I don't know what awaits us," he said, sounding a bit more alive now; "I don't even know how we made it this far."

He looked down at the wolf, his expression serious; "But we will press on. The gods have willed us here for a reason."

Lesrahýr lowered his own head, brilliant, golden eyes like beacons in the gloom.

"But if anything untoward should happen to me, you must leave me, so that you can make it out alive."

The wolf growled, obviously and, predictably enough, disagreeing. The man knelt down beside him.

"I know, my friend," he said, stroking Lezrahýr's fur again; "I know."

The man said no more. He merely stared into the wolf's eyes, which blazed defiantly over bared teeth. Both were silent, and both felt their stomachs growl and ache with hunger. The man, though, was relentless. The wolf, though menacing, eventually buried his teeth behind his muzzle, and the fire in his eyes cooled.

The man nodded once, and stood up again; "Whatever lies ahead"—he swallowed—"it for damned sure will not keep us from food and drink any longer!"

He looked back down at his companion, flashing a grin. The wolf barked enthusiastically, and the both of them began their trial through the stone abysm ahead.

Three triangles, in a triad, inverted and encircled.

Such was the carving on the stone slab that confronted her, defining the opposite edge of the flat mountaintop that she now stood upon.

Hours upon hours of climbing, and her hands and feet were finally free of those ash-ridden stairs.

Above swirled the angry vortex, like a sickly mouth. It vomited a fell air and its cloud skin broke out in endless violent streams of electricity, always striking at the mountain, like the smitten younger brother of two, beating at his elder for the substance that he himself did not have.

And she was the little sister caught right in the middle, yet she paid no attention to her 'siblings.' That crest on the slab was familiar…yet somehow, it was not…

The mountain shone its electrically brilliant shades of blue, casting white shadows all over her skin, and making it appear to possess even less of a complexion than already apparent. The torrent and the downpour persisted, and the wind blew what remained of her tattered and bisected shirt off of her shoulders. She hardly noticed.

She stepped curiously toward the slab, her expression mistrustful. It protruded from the mountain like a loose piece of necrotic flesh. The crest was perfectly and cleanly embedded into it, too smooth—almost as smooth as steel—to have been chiselled.

It was when she reached the centre of the plateau that the mountain shook like an angry rabid hound, as if the elder brother had finally tired of his younger's insubordination. Sure enough, the lightning calmed to a rest, the rain stopped, and the torrent faded away to nothing. And the young sister fell backward with hands clutching her hair in terror, having never seen this side of her elder protector before.

But she was drawn out again by the hot black light that licked its way like fire out of the slab's crest. From the crest beat a single thick pulse that sent a swift ocean wave through the air, distorting reality in all directions for as far as one could track it into the distance. Nervously, she stood up while the mountain rumbled again, though more softly this time. When she did, she noticed the dried bloodstain at the foot of the slab's crest for the first time. There was no contemplation. Just a brief second of uneasiness before her dead heart sunk even lower when the crest's black fire arose into the air and scattered into hundreds of the same red-eyed, ravenous bats that she remembered from those visions she had seen—those visions of unimaginable cruelty and death. They circled the mountaintop, their flapping, rustling, musical orchestra filling the toxic air.

She froze. It was all she could do on this plateau, with a closing wall of bats on the rise, a steep incline of ashen sword rock all around, and the gullet of the sky above.

Then, everything was flooded with the crimson veil, more prominent in her memories than even the bats. They converged in a sickeningly graceful spiral toward the space just short of the centre of the crest, and became something altogether different.

Instantly, she recalled the disfigured Wraith in the woods, and for one terrible half of a second, she thought it was coming for her now, materializing with her atop this mountain to separate her head from her body.

What came instead was not the Wraith, but certainly not relieving in the slightest: An oddly-shaped head atop a fluttering, tattered cloak, drooling acidic blood from a deformed mouth that was forcibly and permanently contorted into a cruel, sinister grin, just below a pair of purple pupils within pale, green, bulging wide-eyes contrasting with a golden orb caged inside a jail of bones floating two feet above the plateau.

The eyes morphed into her mind, where they and their native face turned red and peeled away into an ugly, bloody mess. The panic in her heart spiked, but left her face behind in a dumb, catatonic stupor, her own eyes half-opened and her body limp. She was only dimly aware of how her bones took on the feeling of course sand running into her bloodstream while she was savagely thrown by unknown means off of the side of the mountain. Her perception of passing sword rock, high cloud, and the black horizon blurred and ghosted into a grey mess as her body spun downward.

Then, her stomach changed places—from her throat to her waist—when her body slowed and halted its spinning and reversed its direction.

In a way, it was euphoric. The terror. The imprisoned scream that beat in her lungs to bursting. The sensation of somehow flying upward. The clearing of her vision while the desecrated air slammed into her face, making clear enough the gullet of the sky that was rapidly approaching her—or rather, that _she_ was rapidly approaching.

She wanted to cry, but her eyes had gone dry; she wanted to speak her last words, but her throat had been choked out; she wanted to feel the last beat that her heart should have been able to make. Alas, this would be an unkind and silent, yet unquiet death lacking any measure of peace, deliverance, or even a true sense of finality save for the end of a displeasing muss of grievous memories that she could barely begin to understand.

She flew past the lips of the unnatural beast in the sky, and her sight—the last thing of any perceivable value that she had left—was taken away from her.

And the voice of the old woman, passionless and stern, delivered its verdict.

Three triangles, in a triad, encircled and familiar.

Such was the giant impression fitting the gloriously gargantuan door that confronted the man and his companion. The door bore an intricate metallic design not unlike winding vines. The man found it magnificently beautiful; the architect was long dead, he mused, but he nevertheless admired his or her skill in crafting it. That was, so long as that person would not have attempted to kill him on sight once he passed through it. Given the nature of this tower, it would not have surprised him. In fact, he was sure of it; nothing benevolent could construct a structure prone to such corruption, both of the surrounding land, and the spirit.

He reached out to touch the smooth, chilled surface. His hand moved over several deep gashes before trailing away to the charm under his shirt, resting against his chest as he stared up at the emblem in its centre. He pulled the charm out, its chain falling limp out of his collarless shirt; it was as if it were made specifically as a miniature replica of this very symbol to compliment it.

But this was an emblem of the Sacred Relic recognized throughout his country as holy; why did it adorn the door of a place as accursed as this?

More was amiss here than he had originally imagined—and he had imagined quite a bit by this point. He looked tentatively down at Lesrahýr, whose expression was neutral and patient.

The man's eyes returned sceptically to the door. No handles, levers, or other mechanisms via which it might have been opened. It may as well have been a wall. A pretty one, but a wall, all the same.

He dropped the charm back into his shirt and placed his hands on his hips. A loud growl emanated from his stomach and the burning in his eyes forced him to blink several times in quick succession, as if to magnify their predicament. Not that he had any expectation that food was waiting on the other side.

He touched the door again while Lesrahýr sat down.

"Troubling," the man muttered simply.

"Oh, indeed!"

The man whirled around, his crossbow in front of him in a flash. Lesrahýr was already on his flank, poised to strike at the source of that voice.

But there was nothing there but the man, the wolf, and a disturbing titter that echoed throughout the hallway.

_"Yee hee hee!"_

And then, all was silent again, and the man was suddenly highly discomforted with the gloom and how limited his line of sight was. They waited in their positions for a long time, beads of sweat running down the man's temples.

And then, the sound of bare feet upon stone. Faint, but becoming ever louder. It was too frequent per step for it to be someone walking, and it was coming from the way they had come.

Something was running at them.

The man tightened his grip on his crossbow, almost halfway pulling its trigger. His heart beat as fast as the platting footsteps, louder and louder.

_Plat, plat, plat…_

The sound was joined by a low, phlegmatic gurgle that only just passed for breathing.

In the next second, he could see it: the naked, grey-blue humanoid figure—a tall, heavily emaciated thing with freakishly long legs and arms bearing stretched, clawed hands, morphing out of the darkness. Atop its equally stretched, thin neck was an ovular head bearing three symmetrical pairs of small, orb-like red eyes and between them was a disproportionately large mouth. Through its two rows of three-inch pointed teeth came a high-pitched, tortured scream of rage that tore off that thick blanket of silence instantly as those frightening, superfluously-pumping limbs carried it toward whom it intended to bite and tear and make into its supper.

The man's eyes showed horrific anxiousness as he clenched his teeth and let fly with an arrow at it. It struck its narrow chest pointedly, and it screamed again, louder this time, its body recoiling at the point of impact. But it did not stop.

One second. The man cursed, dropped the crossbow, and drew his knife, all seemingly in one motion, but even that was not fast enough. The creature slammed into him shoulder-first, grabbing his throat and putting him into the door behind him. It screeched again as the man coughed, extending its neck to bite his nose off. Its teeth came but an inch short. It looked back and bellowed once again in outrage when it saw the wolf clamping down on its leg and pulling at its leg. It kicked at him violently, attempting to shake him off, but to no avail; Lesrahýr's jaw was too strong, and he was pulling it away from the man's face, which was turning slightly purple from the asphyxiation.

The creature took to flailing in desperation, not only increasing the pressure on the man's neck, but shaking him around brutally in the process. His eyes rolled to the back of his head. But the creature could not shake Lesrahýr off. Its arms were long, but the wolf soon pulled the creature to their limit. When it finally let go, its claws left three cuts on both sides of the man's neck. He yelled out in pain, clutching at the wounds with his hands. His blood seeped through his fingers.

Lesrahýr, growling, dragged the creature, kicking and screaming with a feral madness, backward, planted his feet on the stone, and flung it ten feet to the side. It landed and rolled with a resounding thud, but it quickly rebounded and, without even completely regaining its footing, charged at Lesrahýr, sounding again its vicious shriek. The wolf met him head-on, and they rolled over the stone in a writhing heap. Lesrahýr had lunged perfectly, getting his mouth around the creature's head. Biting down as hard as he could, he withstood its unrelenting struggling and, paws planted firmly upon its shoulders, wrenched at its head several times until he ripped it clean off, black blood gushing in a tiny stream out of the neck.

He tossed the head aside with a grunt that almost seemed revolted. It landed on the stone with a fleshy thud, before rolling and hitting the wall, the crudely-hanging throat of it leaving little dabs of blood where it hit the ground. The body writhed for another second or two, before relaxing and accepting the death that had come to it. The other half of its throat drowned in the black pool that it had made.

Sitting and leaning against the door with an expression of barely-controlled agony was the man. The wolf trotted toward him, nudging his cheek with his muzzle. The man got up, clenching his teeth and favouring the left side of his neck. He stared at the carcass of the creature, such a bluish-grey hue that it almost blended into the stone that it rested upon. The man let out a few sharp exhales, eyeing the body as if it would reanimate itself. Why not? Everything else in this land was dead, so far as he could see.

But it would not be so: whatever this thing was, it appeared that it would stay dead, as it should, and not just because it was the natural order of things.

He turned around to face the door again, and as soon as he did so, the crest of the Holy Relic lit up in golden light. A crack appeared down the door's middle as it opened slowly inward with the sound of an unholy creak coupled with dragging stone upon stone. It suddenly occurred to the man that he did not want it to open at all, not even a little bit. He smelled a tomb ahead—the stench of wet, rotting bodies. Lesrahýr was no less repulsed.

The titter again—_"Yee hee hee!"_—as soon as the doors clunked against the walls. This time, the man was not as receptive: he merely tilted his head upward, looking thoroughly irritated.

"Who are you?" he called into the gloomy hallway ahead, "What do you want?"

No answer. Nothing but the titter: a rapid giggle that belonged only to madmen, echoing up and down the hall.

The man, resigned, softened his expression, but it would not last long: he was instantly unnerved when he looked back to see that the corpse had disappeared, head and all. Not even the blood remained. It was as if nothing had ever lain there.

A bead of sweat ran down the man's temple as he quickly scanned the hall. No sign of it. It was gone. Completely gone.

The man exhaled heavily, having held his breath. He wanted to close his eyes and collect himself, but he decided against it. What would be there when he opened them again? He did not dare to find out.

He turned to face the opened door again, looking gravely down at the wolf. Lesrahýr returned it. The man swallowed.

He forced himself to turn his eyes forward. Just barely, he saw the faint image of a face just at the edge of the gloomy light, looking at him with dead, empty eyes. In the less than a second, it was as gone as the corpse.

The bead reached his cheekbone, and he swallowed again.

He took the first step. Another, then another. Slow steps. Cautioned steps. Terrified steps.

Unwilling steps.

A huge crash, from behind. Both of them wheeled around again.

The doors had closed. The way out was shut.

They were trapped.

Five seconds. Then, forward again. Once more, the face, at the edge of the light. Once more, it disappeared before he could really _see_ it—before he could confirm that it had actually been there.

Before he could confirm that his mind was still his.

The echoes of his footsteps became slower and slower as he went. In his mind, the titter sounded again, in a mocking tone.

_"Have fun, stranger!__But you'll never run fast enough__!__ Yee hee hee!__"_


	5. Chapter IV: The Paradigm Awakens

Chapter IV

The Paradigm Awakens

A weightless sensation crept into the man's stomach as the echoes of his footsteps became so slow and ambient that they pounded his ears and irritated the slashes at his neck. They had ceased to bleed, but the pounding caused within them an unnerving feeling of wetness that made the man paranoid. Was time slowing down as his feet went forward? It was not a question that he could focus on. The pounding, coupled with the gloom, was making his eyes and ears ache, and by extension, his brain as well. He wondered how long it would be before it liquefied and began to pour out of his ears and nostrils.

He found himself alternating between looking forward and at the ground. Sure enough, every time he did the former, he _thought_ he saw that dead face, always taunting him in his peripherals before vanishing again.

This hallway was long and dark, and his exhaustion was making it darker. He had not slept or eaten in four days, and he could no longer tell if it was his will that was egging him along, or that of the Tower's, leading him into some nest of flesh-deficient zombies or whatever that creature was from before, to be devoured and ensnared. He did not dare look backward any longer. If something had taken to following them on their heels, he did not want to know.

_Them._

What a strange concept now. Was Lesrahýr still at his side? If so, did he still have _his_ mind? Or was he being forced to watch as his companion's sanity was slowly eaten away? Which was the greater punishment?

He could no longer hear his own breathing, or feel his chest rising. His fingers were numb. So too were his face, his feet, and his no-doubt growling stomach. Nothing. All he could do was see—see this endless, dull, narrow hallway, so grand, yet so disgusting. Infuriating. Who would _build_ such a place? This place that did nothing but house the dead who invited the living. Was it even real?

The man stopped.

_Real._

Reality?

What was reality? Was it this? Who was he?

Was he…real? Was any of this real?

If not, then who was he? Who? Or what? And how? That is, if there even was a "how."

Who was Lesrahýr? What was he? And how?

Wait. What happened? The light was gone. The gloomy light in front of him was gone. He couldn't see.

_"Lesrahýr?"_ he tried to call. But no sound came out. None that he could hear, anyway.

He had the sensation of imbalance, but no feeling. Was he stumbling? Falling? Was he dying? Was this the end?

_"Oh, stranger! Don't tell me that you're giving up already!"_

That titter—_"Yee hee hee!"_—again.

_"You,"_ the man answered, _"Who—?"_

_"—Ahh, you're no fun! None of you… You're all so very boring, as__king the same generic questions__ and making me repeat myself. __Humph__!"_

The man's patience wore thin.

_ "I'm not here to indulge you or your little games!"_

_ "Oh ho! Getting frustrated, are we? Well then, stranger, what _are_ you here for then?"_

The man was about to answer, when it occurred to him that he had absolutely no idea. Not for his part, anyway. But he was sure that—

_"—__you're here because it's__ the will of the __G__ods?"_

_ "How did you—"_

_ "I can read people's minds. Pretty handy, eh? Well, for me."_

_ "Who are you?"_

_ "_Again_ with the generic questions! Can the living truly be this uncreative?"_

_ "Spare me your nonsense!"_

_ "Oooh, quite the temper you have there, don't you, Mr Good and Holy Priest? Yee hee hee!"_

This giggling maniac was driving him insane faster than the Tower was.

_"And to think, I was going to help you through this place. What a waste. You have the appearance of someone with a destiny. An important one. Such a pity—"_

_ "Wait, what? What do you mean?"_

_ "Ho ho! That caught your attention, did it? Well, too bad. You have forgotten your upbringing, priest, or you would not be demonstrating such a lack of manners."_

_ "I'm going to die here…please…"_

_ "Ahh, feeling a bit more tactful now, do you? __Tactful and _desperate_! __Yee hee hee! Well. I suppose I _am _feeling somewhat generous today."_

The man waited silently. What was this…person playing at?

_"Oh, don't worry, any questions you have will all be answered in due time. But for now…you have walked—or should I say, _run_—into the dragon's __den, so to speak. Now, in most cases, the only people who do so are complete and utter idiots. Really, man, you don't belong here__—__though it _is _rather amusing to see you trudge and sway down that hall like a recently-divorced homeless man who's had too much to drink, I cannot lie. Yee hee hee!_

_ "But I digress; as I said, you are in Hell, or at least, __on its doorstep__. You were thinking on the right track before, by the way, when you were wondering if you were being __led__ along or not. __You are, but not by the Tower, no. __T__ruth is, I've been the one __pulling__ you through this place. Frankly, you living folk who enter here tend to lose their wit under the curse, and _do_ find __your__selves in a nest of Jailwalkers. Trust me; you don't live long after that."_

_ "Jailwalkers…?"_

_ "That thing whose head your companion bit off back there. Nice jaw on him, by the way! You must be very good at taking care of him!_

_ "Ahem…anyway, it may seem to you like you've been going forward this whole time, but really, you've been walking through the edge of the Catacombs."_

_ "Catacombs…?"_

_ "…Gods, you're dense. It's exactly what it sounds like, stranger: a massive, labyrinthine prison. Ancient, too. Even older than I am! Yee hee hee! Though, that would be plainly obvious."_

The man was nowhere near in the mood for jokes, though he had to wonder, on that note, how old this madman was.

_"Now that's not very nice! 'Madman.' Tch! You make me sound like I'm a bad guy! Maybe I shouldn't bother—"_

_ "No, no…I'm sorry. Just…tell me what I need to do to get through this wretched place."_

_ "…I'll let that rude comment about my home slide, seeing as how you're learning your manners. All right, here's the deal, stranger: you're about to be in a world of fear, torture, and death, in that order if you don't do _exactly _as I say, when I say it. One wrong move and you'll be compost. Understand?"_

_ "Yes."_

The man was somewhat unnerved at how quickly the tittering voice shifted unnaturally into a deep one of stern authority. But he pushed those thoughts away quickly.

_"I'm going to release you from my control. I actually somewhat have to because I only have so much time before my hold on you starts to weaken and I need to rest. You'll get your vision, your hearing, and your feeling __back__and you'll feel somewhat revitalized. Seriously, stranger, you came to the wrong place on an empty stomach! Yee hee hee!"_

Again, the titter, so sudden—

_"Anyway, after I release you, I can give you instructions telepathically, but that's about all that I can guarantee. If you die, that's on you."_

_ "What will I have to do?"_

_ "…The best thing to do is _not_ to think, stranger. Just do as you're told, and you _might_ come out of this alive. Oh! And, umm…you're going to want to be using those explosive bolts of yours, too. Gotta hand it to you, __you __are decently equipped."_

_ "Why—"_

_ "—Thinking, stranger! Don't be doing it!"_

_ "…All right. I understand."_

_ "Good man. Now, when you wake up, you'll find your crossbow in your hand with a lit explosive bolt knocked in already. You'll know where to shoot it. Other than that, all I can say is…try not to die _too _fast! Yee hee hee!"_

_ "Wait—!"_

The man opened his eyes, exhaling sharply. He was standing in the middle of a four-way hall intersection. Lesrahýr was at his side, staring up at him and looking deathly concerned. The man blinked several times. Where were they—?

A piercing screech from the left. Startled, the man looked that way to see another creature—what the tittering voice called a Jailwalker—running at him with the same viciousness and arm-swinging lust as the other one. Without thinking, the man levelled his crossbow at it and let fly the sizzling bolt. It pierced the creature dead centre in the chest.

Blood, torn limbs, and chunks of flesh scattered and splattered all over the floor and walls as the bolt exploded and rattled the hallway, the Jailwalker's cacophony cutting short instantly.

But the silence would not last. The man flinched in alarm as he heard more screams echo throughout the Catacombs. They were likely drawn by the noise.

"_Forward, stranger! Not much time left now! Yee hee hee!"_

The man nodded to no one.

"Lesrahýr!" he yelled, and both of them began to sprint, starting through the middle hallway.

These passages, at least, were somewhat illuminated by wall-mounted torches, though the yellow light upon grey-blue stone somehow made the place seem even more depressing. There was an acrid smell about the air—the same one that he remembered smelling before, when the giant stone door opened, though it was much stronger now. He had to contest the words of the Mad Ghost—the name which he had decided on for the voice—when it had mentioned that it was a bad idea to traverse this place on an empty stomach; he would have regurgitated his insides by now.

_"Well _excuse me_, stranger! It's not like I remember what it feels like to _eat _these days!"_

The man could only speculate as to the voice's meaning as he and Lesrahýr flew through these, at times straight, other times half-circular passages. Through this, however, the man discovered where the stench emanated from: these ways were lined with prison cells sealed with strong iron bars with no doors (he guessed that the bars moved via the activation of an ancient mechanism, or through the use of magic). In them were huddled together dozens upon dozens of black-skinned, deformed, rotting, thinned, dirty creatures with small bodies that contained no muscle or fat, along with hairless heads. Some of them jumped forth at the bars, reached their arms through them, and tried futilely to claw at the man and the wolf as they passed by, hissing a weak rasp from their toothless mouths with big, blood red eyes wide, angry, and heavily dilated. Most of them, however, shied away from the visitors, huddling together in the back corners of their cells, shivering all the while. The smell was the smell of rotting flesh and faeces.

A particularly loud scream happened to echo through the passage, causing them all to flinch, and even the less tame of them to scurry backward. The man and the wolf were coming up on a left turn in the passage as part of a three-way intersection.

"_Duck!"_

A screeching Jailwalker burst out from behind the corner toward the man and its swipe nearly took his head off. But he had done as instructed. He shouldered the creature into the bars of one of the cells, inviting an angry rasp as the impact momentarily stunned it.

"_Left!"_

They turned just as the man saw, in the corner of his eye, two more Jailwalkers ahead, running down the passage opposite the way they had been going. He knew that they had caught sight of him and Lesrahýr when they, too, sounded their morale-destroying war cries. The man felt his spine shiver a bit; he did not know for how much longer he could endure these creatures. He had to admit that he feared them; they were the most vicious things he had ever seen or heard, and now, they had three of them at their heels. These things were persistent and the man did not think that they would be able to shake them off with legwork alone.

"_Yee hee hee! Well, what did you expect to find at Hell's Gate? Butterflies, roses, and a tourist guide? Not likely, stranger!_

"_Anyway, you're coming up on a device—a lever. It'll be on the ground to your left. You'll want to push it down as you pass it. Think you can handle that? I hope it's not _too _old and __rusted!"_

With a snicker, Mad Ghost went silent. The man really hated that voice. A lot.

But sure enough, there it was, sitting under a torch: the lever, brown and rusted, but looking functional. He hoped that whatever it did, it would lead to a solution concerning the three wailing problems behind them because the platting of their bare footsteps was getting louder. How fast they were!

The man pushed down the lever, which gave with surprising ease. He heard a knowing giggle in his head. That damned voice was having the time of its life, it seemed—assuming that "life" was the correct word.

As soon as he passed the lever, the iron bars of the cells on each side began to rise and the passage was filled with creaks and whines. The creatures within the cells stirred excitedly.

"_Why would you have me open those? Starving creatures like that—!"_ the man protested.

"_You'll see. For now, you'd best keep running, or you'll be swamped!"_Mad Ghost replied matter-of-factly.

He could see where this passage turned right. It was a fair distance away, but he felt that they could reach it before the bars, already at their halfway point, fully opened.

This was enough room for some of the prisoners to crawl under and jump at him, breathing hungry breaths. He had to dodge and beat some of them away, but most left him alone. He snuck a backward glance and just barely caught a glimpse of the three Jailwalkers biting into the prisoners and tearing them apart with brutal and frightening efficiency.

They turned at the corner, trailing a few curious prisoners behind them. Unlike Jailwalkers, they were weak and slow. They would lose them quickly.

What kind of society would cage these creatures in such conditions? Even prisoners deserved some measure of decent accommodations—

"_Knock a bolt. An explosive one."_

The man did so.

"_Ignite it with one of the torches. _Don't _miss!"_

The man slowed his pace for a second, raising the bolt's fuse to a torch on the right wall, before picking up his pace again. Lesrahýr barked at the long curve of the passage ahead, growling. The man rested his index finger readily on the trigger as two more Jailwalkers appeared from behind the curve around seventy yards away, one leading. The man took aim at the lead of the pair.

Fifty yards.

The man steadied his aim as well as he could.

Thirty yards.

He let the bolt fly with but a centimetre of fuse left. He had aimed at the creature's chest, but hit the left leg, causing it to stumble angrily. It didn't matter. He pre-emptively put his arm over his face. In the next second, he was splattered with Jailwalker innards as the bolt scattered its lower half and sent its upper half flying over the man's head. The shock of the blast took the other one's arm off and drove it with fatal force into the bars of a cell. Pieces of burning flesh wound up all over the walls and floor, and the man felt the gushing sound of them giving under his boots as he and Lesrahýr cleared the mess.

It would continue like this for what the man estimated was another hour or so, winding through paths, pulling levers, avoiding droves of screaming Jailwalkers of increasing size, and occasionally being forced to dirty the place with their flesh, blood, and guts, all at the on-the-fly instructions of Mad Ghost. The man could only wonder at how it was apparently able to witness everything that went on in the Catacombs.

"_First of all, I _am _male. I mean, it was you who originally referred to me as a 'madman,' after all, you rude, _rude_ stranger.__ Why t__he insistence on the 'it?' Bah!_

"_Second of all, you are _very_ bad at following instructions sometimes. No thinking! Did I not make that clear? Or do you _want_ to be eaten? Be my guest, if you like! Yee hee hee!"_

The man grunted. He did not like this thing's—…_his_ sense of humour one bit.

"_For as long as I've been here, one would think I'd have no sense at all, stranger. Be thankful that I'm not babbling some inane gibber into your head constantly._

"_Anyway, there's a _very_ large posse of Jailwalkers sprinting directly at you from the other side of this corridor. Between you __and them __is a right turn. You'll want to be getting there before they do. Best pick up the pace, stranger, you old slacker, you! Lest you be turned inside out, then torn apart, __and then__ chomped on something terrible! Yee hee hee!"_

The man wondered, annoyed, whether or not Mad Ghost was, in fact, responsible for all of the Jailwalkers in some way. He would not put it past him; the voice seemed just _ecstatic_.

"_You know, stranger, you really do complain a lot. You sound like you need a good shoulder rub. Sorry, but I sort of lack hands, and I really don't swing that way anyway."_

The man scowled, knocked another explosive bolt, and kept running. It was a long hallway, and the prisoners seemed particularly vicious and desperate here. Some of them writhed violently in their cages, shaking the bars.

And then, the man could see it: a drove of Jailwalkers, around twenty in number by his estimation, zooming toward him and his companion. A bit closer was the right turn that Mad Ghost mentioned. It would be very close.

The man slowed the slightest bit to ignite the blot via a torch, wasting no time to aim it at the oncoming mob. It would be an easy shot; there was not a lot of room to miss.

The man allowed another twenty yards of distance between him and the Jailwalkers to disappear before firing. He could not tell exactly which one he hit, but it didn't matter. The creatures were packed so close together that the explosion literally masked the hall in black entrails. Some of them were blown in half, others lost limbs, and more were completely annihilated. Innards wrapped around arms, legs, and torsos in a bloody orgy of destruction.

It was in this moment that the man realized that his estimation had been very far off. Jailwalkers were still pouring through the hallway: a screaming, gurgling river rapid. Their numbers could not be determined. Some of them tripped over their fallen kin's intestines to be trampled by the ones behind them. But it did little to slow the mob, and the man picked up his pace, burning his already heated legs further.

He and the wolf would make the turn with but ten yards between themselves and the mob. A short distance away sat another lever in the middle of a four-way intersection.

"_You're almost done, stranger. Press that down, and make it quick! They're coming from all directions now. Yee hee hee!"_

The mob behind him roared hungrily and the man could indeed see yet another one approaching them far to the front. They would have to race to that lever before the Jailwalkers reached it. Nothing that the man or the wolf had could save them from so many of these creatures.

Suddenly, the cell bars in the corridor began to open.

"What in the names of the Gods—?" the man cried.

"_You're too slow, stranger! I _knew _that you'd never run fast enough! Geez, I have to do _everything_ for you, don't I?" _Mad Ghost answered.

"_Damn you, this isn't going to help! You're making it worse!"_

"_Oh, shut up and just keep running!"_

The man growled in frustration, but did as he was told. Prisoners crawled under their cell bars, leaping for the man, the wolf, and even the Jailwalkers. They would never stand a chance, but the man had to admit that it was helping to put some space between them and the mob. He and his companion had to be careful not to be pinned by any of the prisoners, though, and they were many.

Looking forward, he saw that they were hindering the Jailwalkers ahead too.

Thirty yards.

A prisoner leapt headfirst at the man directly from the front. Having no room to dodge, the man drew his knife in his left hand, drove it into the sorry thing's face, and tossed it against the bars in one fluid motion.

Fifteen yards.

The broken and torn body of one of the prisoners flew past the man from behind, narrowly missing his head, and colliding with other prisoners. It had probably been thrown by an especially angry Jailwalker. The man and the wolf continued to beat through them, causing small chain reactions resulting in faecal-covered bodies laid all over the floor.

Five yards.

They burst through one last clump of prisoners, the man stumbling and falling forward next to the lever. He rolled over to see a Jailwalker still running at him, the rest being swarmed by the prisoners. It was going to leap at him.

With a yelling cry, the man pulled down the lever just as the Jailwalker launched itself through the air. Pointed iron bars shot up from all four edges of the intersection, one of which caught the Jailwalker in its "chin" and tore through its skull, lifting its limp body twenty feet into the air. It hung there, slowly sliding downward, and leaving its blood and brains behind.

Other Jailwalkers collided with the bars, reaching their elongated arms through and shaking at them just as the prisoners had, roaring in bloodthirsty frustration.

"Lesrahýr, keep to the lever," the man commanded through short breath. The wolf complied, hugging the lever in a guarded stance.

The man watched the frenzy occurring in all four directions in horrified disgust. Jailwalkers tore heads in half, ripped limbs off, and separated torsos from legs, biting them to pieces with their hungry mouths. Bodies were thrown with savage velocity against the bars, which held, but vibrated and swayed. They would be smeared across the floors and walls and devoured all the same. One was thrown high enough to be impaled upon two of the bars, red blood splattering the centre of the intersection and further discolouring the man's clothing. The blood trickled sluggishly in spiralling motions down those bars.

In the hallway from which they had come, a Jailwalker tore a piece of muscle from the wasted corpse it had made out of a prisoner. When it was finished, it raised its head toward the unseen ceiling and released a long, lancinating drone, red meat sticking out from between its blood-stained teeth. This would be the last thing that the man saw before the floor enclosed by the bars rumbled and began to depress, sliding downward.

So it was an elevator.

The screams and cries would become quieter and quieter as the dim light above grew smaller. Feeling nauseous and panting, the man closed his eyes and tried to breathe, but the smell of the blood of the prisoners and the excretions that they had left on his jacket and on Lesrahýr's fur made this difficult.

The roaring noises finally subsided, and all that could be heard was the low sound of the elevator dragging against the cold stone walls.

Then, the titter.

"_Well done, stranger, well done! I say, you're the first living creature that's ever made it through the Catacombs. At least, in my time here! Ho ho!"_

"_Don't talk to me."_

"_Now, now, is that any way to thank the one who guided you through this place? Were it not for me, you'd have died a long time ago! Pfft! I don't even know why I try so hard…"_

"_Your home is overrun with horrible monsters. You should really do some housecleaning."_

"_Hah! Well, even if I wanted to, it's not like it's in my hands to do so. Come now, stand up and stop being such a wuss! You're making _me _sick!"_

For no particular reason, the man obeyed, exhaling softly.

"_That's better."_

"_Where is this elevator taking us?"_

"_Underground. You'll have to find your own way through the Caverns because my range doesn't extend down there."_

"_I'm crushed. _Really_."_

"_Yes, yes, I'm sure! Tch! Anyway, you're going to be very irritated, but you're not out of this yet. Of course, it's underground, so you probably already guessed that."_

"_What's down there?"_

"_Dervens, mostly. And a few…other things."_

"_Dervens? Other things?"_

"_You'll see, stranger. You'll see. Don't worry; what power I have left, I'll use to revitalize you and hold back your hunger and exhaustion for a bit longer. Best I can do. Listen; try not to get yourself killed down there. It would really suck after all the effort I went through to get you this far."_

"_Your concern is_ _noted…"_

"_Not at all! And with that—"_

"_Wait."_

"_What, what is it? Make it quick, I've run almost dry!"_

The man licked his lips and swallowed a scratchy, cumbersome lump of mucous-like saliva.

"…_Thanks."_

A pause.

"…_Yee hee hee! Hee hee! Don't be thanking me _yet_, stranger! You've only just _barely _begun to launch forth into the deep end!"_

And with that, Mad Ghost fell silent, and the man and the wolf stood there in quiet discomfort as the elevator took them further down through the Devil's throat.


	6. Chapter V: A Dirge for an Echo

Chapter V

A Dirge for an Echo

Fields. Endless Fields. Fields of gold—of sun.

The breath of the Giant flowing through the hair, and carrying the smell of wheat on a hot summer day.

Everything, gold: the crop, the sky, the faces of women and children, running and playing in the waist-high grass, even though the sparkling water droplets from yesterday's rain had not yet dried from the heat. Trees in the distance, shedding pre-autumn leaf into soft bark shadow. The occasional house, standing high against a backdrop of red, orange, and yellow as the sun set over the distant desert in the west. The creeping dusk in the east, like wet paint flowing onto a canvas, morphing red to purple, orange to pink, yellow to red, with the black-blue to follow with its innumerable white specks for the children to wish on for things that children desire. But that would come later; the light still remained, and in the grass stood…

The man stirred as the elevator continued its dragging ambience. Though he resolved not to fall too deep into sleep with the Tower's weight still apparent, he felt that a rest was in order; their time on the elevator would likely be their only chance to do so. He had found a relatively clean place on it near the lever, which he had propped his head crudely upon, Lesrahýr having curled near him. It was difficult to ignore the scented mix of faeces and blood, still somewhat strong, but this moment was better than any that they had experienced for the past four days.

It had been a good thirty minutes since Mad Ghost had gone silent, and the man shivered.

Jailwalkers. They would be forever etched in his mind, especially that last one, screaming in the bloody waste it had created. Optimistically, he hoped that he would never lay eyes on them again. Pessimistically, he had the foreboding feeling that he would, and all too soon, at that.

Their image and the sounds of their screams disrupted the positive memories of his homeland that he attempted to focus on, despite the land's ultimate fate. For every running child, there was a Jailwalker speeding after it with its limbs flapping in that unnecessarily exaggerated manner. For every smiling woman, there was a Jailwalker behind her, its horribly stretched and clawed hands ready to close in around her head. In every house, there was a Jailwalker moving with such fluidity that those sleeping in their beds would never see the terror coming. In the branches of every tree, a Jailwalker hid, ready to launch itself out of it to devour the families that had taken to resting in the shade, their eyes closed and completely unaware of the danger that they were in. They hid in the grass, fell from the sky, and came like a shrieking tidal wave out of the great desert in the west, vertically stretched in body, seven feet tall, and clashing with the world around them.

In the end, there would be nothing else but Jailwalkers. Their shrill throats would torment him forever.

The man sighed.

It was not as if there was a land to return to anyway, Jailwalkers or not.

His thoughts were cut short by the sudden halt of the sound of the dragging stone. The elevator was still moving, suspended by unknown mechanisms (the man did not bother to pay any mind to the hypothetical nature of those mechanisms; he was far past curiosity in this damned place), but there were no walls now. He stood up. Was the trip to end now?

He saw faint light: the light of fire, dancing on dark rock wall.

At the man's feet, Lesrahýr stirred and revealed his eyes to the man, those golden irises being the only thing aside from the light that the man could see. He cracked a small smile at his companion, knowing that the wolf would see it.

"Time to wake up," the man whispered.

With a low grunt, Lesrahýr stood up, his body now a more visible silhouette as the light drew nearer. The man stroked the wolf's head and scratched him behind his ears for a moment, before patting him in the side affectionately.

The man stepped cautiously toward the platform's edge and gazed downward. What he saw was an enormous cavern—a colossal expanse so long that the other side could not be seen. For all the man knew, it could have been as long as, or longer than, the valley that they had crossed in the canyon—the one whose darkness from which those fleshless beings had climbed from and overrun in the night.

It appeared that it was daytime topside; rays of light cast down from an unknown ceiling, granting some cursory luminescence to a massive lake that, for the most part, flooded the cavern. The elevator was taking them down to a small islet near the lake's edge, which was in turn connected via a natural bridge of rock to the mouth of a small cave, above which the sources of the faint light—a couple of torches—were mounted. The air smelled pleasantly moist and musty and the faint sound of water droplets hitting the lake was apparent. _Plip…plip…plip…_

The man backed up toward the centre of the platform, and in the next moment, the elevator made contact with the ground, emanating a sound similar to the crushing of rocks. The man guessed that it had not been used for a long time, perhaps centuries, or millennia.

Save for the _plip_ of the water droplets and the faint _pop_ from the torches as their fires ate at their unseen sustenance the man presumed it to be ancient sorcery of some sort; there was obviously no one here to keep these lit, much less the ones in the Catacombs, what with all the Jailwalkers haunting the corridors.

The cavern and the lake were quiet. Never more clearly could the man hear his own breathing, along with that of the wolf. The lake water looked clean and calm, and the man was half-tempted to submerge himself in it to help in nullifying the bloody, faecal smell about his clothes, but he knew better; no matter how calm or peaceful, this lake could be hiding anything.

He gazed out at the expanse. In the distance, greyed by the darkness, he could just barely see the outline of a massive structure, stretching over the lake and connecting the two sides of the cavern.

A bridge?

The man looked dismayed; between them and the structure, there was an intimidating gap and the man had the sinking feeling that it was going to be their objective. Not to mention, there was no telling exactly how confusing a network of caves in a place like this would be. It could take them an hour or two; it could also take them a month, and by then, they would be long dead.

The man turned his head toward the mouth of the small cave, but snapped it back again when he thought he saw a face—that same, dead-eyed, taunting face that he remembered from the edge of the Catacombs. But, like before, it was gone before the man could verify its existence.

So it wasn't Mad Ghost. It was something else.

But was it anything? Was it real?

The man touched his chest, where the charm rested. Without looking down at him, he addressed the wolf: "Let's go, Lesrahýr. We have much ground to cover."

They ventured across the miniature isthmus. Just low enough to reach, the man grabbed and yanked one of the torches out of the rock, little pebbles falling out of the emptied hole that remained, crepitating on the rock way, and plashing into the water. Together, he and the wolf disappeared into the mouth of the cave.

Behind them, outside of their notice, the elevator's lever clanked back into the upright position and the platform began its long journey to the Catacomb intersection from whence it came. Ripples formed and expanded in the water near the isthmus, and in their centres, small bubbles arose to the lake's surface, where they burst with a subtle _pop_.

The intrusion of life again. Dare a living man's feet tread once again upon a land so far gone? Moreover, dare they to invade the earth underneath, which had long belonged to the dead? _Dare_ they?

_N__ay__,_ declared the Black Shepherd, _Forgive no trespasses; Hell hath no mercy._

Following was the subtle stirring of earth and water.

How dark these caves were.

The man's hair stood on the back of his neck; not only was this tunnel narrow to suffocation, but they reminded him of the first hallway that they had walked through within the tower, and how that Jailwalker—

The word echoed in his mind, and every time it did, he snuck a backward glance at the blackness behind them. How likely was it that they were being followed? The man was almost positively convinced that they were.

But a Jailwalker would not be so subtle; this presence that he felt in his stomach was something else.

The narrowness of the cave did, at least, give them less in the way of directions to expect an ambush from, though that was by no means a comforting thought; there _were_ things in this world that could pass through walls, after all. If such apparitions existed down here, then they were most certainly doomed.

That is, unless they were instead being watched.

The man tried to push this train of thought out of his mind. He was slightly uplifted by Lesrahýr's presence. Even if both he and the wolf were powerless against what they could stumble upon next, there was a certain comfort in the notion that neither of them had to die alone, even if dying here was a clear path to a cheap mockery of true death that denied one their peace and an ascension to the realm of the Golden Ones. Had the man not known better, he would have thought that the curse of the tower both killed whoever lived and resurrected whoever had died already.

But the man knew better.

Or hoped it.

The cave was widening. They were probably coming up on a clearing. The man instinctively placed his hand on his knife sheath.

He had thought correctly: it was a clearing—a chamber—ovular, and, predictably, there were no less than three paths open to them on its opposite side, not to mention other openings overlooking it. The man, rethinking, moved his hand to his crossbow, which he took out and held, bolt knocked. He would avoid using explosive bolts; they would be certain to cause potentially dangerous cave-ins, and he did not know what else the noise could draw.

They stepped into the chamber. The man could just barely see the other side of it with the torch light.

Everything was still and silent. They had travelled away from the water, and the _plip_ of water droplets could no longer be heard. The room was empty.

Making a cautious sweep of the room, he stepped forward with equal caution, hugging the wall to his right. He moved slowly and quietly, Lesrahýr following closely behind him.

A minute passed as they cleared around half of the chamber's length. Having paid most of his attention to the three openings that he could now see more clearly, he was surprised when his right shoulder brushed against something on the wall. With a gasp, he jumped back a bit, levelling his crossbow at whatever it was.

What he saw was two feet—two skeletal feet, run through with a large nail. His eyes travelled upward, to its legs, its pelvis, and its ribcage until finally, he saw the skull, hanging down sideways with its jaw open. Four more nails kept it aloft upon an old, long, rotten wood board by its hands and shoulders, the rest of its body being pulled out by gravity. Like the room, it was still, and so was the crusted blood that ran in a flat waterfall down the wall behind it. The man slowly lowered his crossbow, an expression of utmost pity overtaking his features. The sight of the skeleton deeply disheartened him, and his free hand moved to clench his chest, where the charm was.

He lowered his head briefly, in his mind saying a prayer for the tortured soul that once resided within these bones.

Eventually, his hand fell from the charm and he raised his chin again. He began to tread further on, but stopped short when he found himself enthralled, somehow, by the skull's empty sockets. His expression went from pity to mistrust.

Then, to horror.

Within the sockets, blue orbs were fading in, brightening fast. The man halfway raised his crossbow again. By that time, the orbs were completely illuminated.

A Stal.

Its jaw, which, strangely, was missing none of its teeth, slowly and silently closed, and its skull abruptly turned to "look" at the man with those glowing blue orbs. The sudden movement caused the man's crossbow-holding arm to twitch upward and Lesrahýr to drop into a guarded stance, growling.

The man and the tortured Stal stared each other down silently for a few minutes, until the man turned his head to the left. His jaw dropped as he saw more pairs of blue orbs all around the room, all belonging to other Stals nailed to boards at varying heights.

All of them looking at him.

He turned in a complete circle, meeting the stares of all of these tortured souls (he counted twenty-three), before coming back to the first one. The man waved his hand behind him at the growling Lesrahýr, who immediately fell silent.

The man and the Stal locked eyes (if the latter's orbs could indeed be considered as such) for a few more moments, the man looking sceptical, yet receptive. The Stal's gaze carried an air of invitation and of command, yet the man felt no malevolence.

Eventually, the Stal broke the stare, turned its skull, and focused its orbs in on the direction of the three cave mouths.

Right at that moment, the man brought his crossbow to bear in that direction when he heard moaning there—tortured, needy, familiar moaning, followed by the sound of bone clanking on rock combined with the pressing or squeezing of meat.

The creatures from the valley abyss, one sluggishly limping out from each of the three passageways.

The man took a tentative step backward and, following movement in the corner of his eye, he turned to see two more of them, hobbling toward them out of the cave from whence they had come, with more approaching and falling from the overlooking openings into the chamber with resonant, fleshy, crackling _plops_.

Movements weak and retarded, they hoisted themselves up and regained their footing, their soft cries hungering for salvation—and flesh—as blood pumped out through all of the openings in what remained of their musculature, leaving large, fresh stains in their wake. Their claw-fingered, bony hands automatically rose to the fronts of their chests as they were drawn by the warm life force that they sensed streaming off of the living duo that had wandered into their midst. Their bodies were loose and incoherent, their torsos swaying to and fro supererogatory with every laboured step, with their heads flying every which way as a result, unable to achieve any notion of stiff stability. Their ravaged legs bent inward, further frustrating their movements.

Were these the "Dervens" that Mad Ghost had mentioned? The man assumed as much.

The man wasted no time; he let fly with a bolt at the nearest one to his right. The bolt ripped through its skull, a thin funnel of blood squeezing and squirting its way briefly out of the hole, before the Derven fell face-first onto the hard floor in a meaty heap. It burbled its last moan, but was drowned out by those of its kin, not at all bothered by their fallen comrade as they gimped past it.

There was no path of retreat. They were cornered, and would need to fight their way through. The chamber was not very large; the Dervens were coming discomfortingly close now.

"We will have to take them, my friend," the man began, the wolf barking in agreement. He glanced at the Stals on the walls. All of them seemed to be staring past the Dervens, and directly toward the left exit.

He understood, silently nodding his thanks.

One of the Dervens made a particularly bold advance, only to have the man drive the torch into its face. It caught fire, the Derven's outcry sounding quite similar to both that of a tortured man and a crying child, mixed and morphed into something intolerable.

The man held the torch menacingly at the other Dervens, who were suddenly quite reluctant to approach him.

The moans of the Dervens took on a frustrated demeanour as they continued to lunge at the man, yet stumbled back when he waved the torch near them.

The one whose face had caught fire had fallen silent, its head no more than a worthless pile of ashes in the middle of the chamber, with the rest of its body following. The others put a noticeable amount of space between themselves and the conflagrating corpse.

These creatures were persistent; this trick would not work for much longer.

"Time to go, Lesrahýr," he man said, flustered. He glanced down briefly at his companion; "Straight at the exit; the one on the left."

The wolf did not return the glance, but barked, keeping his eyes on the clamouring creatures, their moans having grown into desperate screams.

"Ready?" the man yelled. The wolf barked again.

"Go!"

With that, the man and the wolf charged into the mob, the former waving the torch back and forth, setting more Dervens on fire, and bashing the butt of his crossbow into the skulls of those who retaliated, while the latter simply ploughed his way through whatever stood in the way.

It was only a matter of seconds; they reached the exit quickly. Just as the man managed to step through the cave mouth, he was tripped by the well-timed placement of a Derven's hand. The torch slipped out of his hand and flew forward onto the ground, out of his reach, as the hand attempted to pull him backward. He turned over, kicking a crouching Derven away with his free foot, but was unable to loosen the other from that grabbing hand. The man cried out in frustration as the other Dervens moved in for the kill.

He heard a loud, thunderous growl, and was shocked to see Lesrahýr leap back through the cave mouth into the mob. The resulting fall of all the Dervens at the front lost that hand its grip on his foot. The man scurried to his feet, running over to grab the torch, before turning around, his expression one of horror.

"Lesrahýr!" he screamed. But all that he could see through the opening was a writhing mess of bone, muscle, and blood. The man hesitated, and in that moment, two Dervens broke through the mouth to come after him. The nearest one swiped, digging through his right arm.

The man cried out in irate pain, and, overcome with grief, dropped the torch again and lashed out, grabbing that Derven's head with his bare hand and bashing it into the jagged rock wall behind him with fluid brutality. It collapsed to the ground, either lifeless or dazed, it did not matter. He turned again, driving his boot into the torso of the second Derven, before launching a crossbow bolt at it. It pierced cleanly through the side of its head and then into the wall, holding the creature limp and bleeding.

More were coming, and the man was forced to pick up the torch and retreat through the narrow tunnel with the Dervens clamouring after him with their selfish cries, his eyes welling up as he went. He tried to hold back the tears, so that they did not impede his vision in this dim passage.

He came up on another Derven in the tunnel. With a furious, aggrieved cry, he slammed his boot into its gaping jaw, breaking its pointed teeth and sending it flying a few feet backward. He leapt over it and kept running, his breathing heavy and inconsistent.

Soon enough, all even, rational thought escaped him.

_Lesrahýr… Lesrahýr, no…_

His eyes ceased to see what was in front of him, and instead, all that he could perceive was that which was behind him. Images flashed in his mind, depicting his dearest friend—images of those monsters clawing him to death, pulling his legs off, and victual what was left.

His pace faltered. The path ceased to matter. In that moment, he could hear the fell heartbeat of the Caverns, and was instantly lost to it.

Vibrations.

_What man would dare to tread here? The man from the east, that's who!_

Such curious vibrations.

_He is the man from the east. He walks where he wills!_

Vibrations.

_Or at least, the man _thinks_ that he walks where he wills._

The earth is vibrating.

_But the man is not allowed to pass through here. No, we think he should stay a while!_

The air is vibrating.

_So let's come out to meet him! Show him your hospitality!_

My skin is vibrating.

_Yes… Go to meet him! Show him how friendly __we __all are!_

Why was it all vibrating?

_Wolfie was easy enough to convince!__ We can invite him too!_

Who's there?

_Why, your friendly __neighbourhood__ deceased, at your service! Who else?_

Is it you again, Mad Ghost?

_Mad Ghost? Hey, do _you_ know a 'Mad Ghost?' No? How about _you_? 'Mad Ghost?'_

It must be Mad Ghost again, isn't it?

_Nope, no 'Mad Ghost' here! Just us__, your__ friendly __neighbourhood__ deceased__!_

Where's my friend?

_Why, right here! _We're _your friends!_

What have you done with my friend?

_Oh, come on! Don't you want to be friends with _us_ instead? We're a lot more fun…!_

No—where is he?

_Come on… You _know_ that you want to…!_

No. No, no, no…

Tunnels. Endless tunnels.

Dark tunnels. Tunnels that he could not see in.

Tunnels with history. Here is gathered history. Termina's history.

Here is gathered Termina's bloody history of greed and hatred.

Another swaying, dead creature. Shoot it. It drops. It dies again. A death atop another. Move on.

Follow the eyes of the Stals. Cut through the dead. Shoot through the dead. Kill through the dead.

Make the dead, dead. Make the dead dead, dead, if necessary. Sometimes, the dead just don't die.

Whispers.

A familiar voice. A voice that should not speak anymore. A lovely voice. An attractive voice.

A voice that he did not want to hear here.

A dead voice, speaking the words of someone who should not be heard—who should be dead.

Where was it coming from? It was getting louder. So maybe he was getting closer.

Why?

Why this voice? Why here? Why now? Why ever?

That cut throat—it should be resting. But no. Not here. Here, the dead just don't die. Not even the beauty of the dead.

The dead just don't die.

Don't die.

Don't die.

_Please_ don't die!

_Please _don't die again! Not again! Not—

The man's eyes opened and he felt the cool breeze hit his face. His jaw dropped.

Those smells—that colour—that sun. Those distant trees. Those simple country homes. The way that they dotted the fields that had no end or edge.

He was standing in the Golden Crop, the blades of the grass shimmering under the bright sun, bending and giving way to the sweet, sweet breath of the Giant.

He was standing in Vegatria.

But none of that interested him. What drew his eyes was the woman standing in the grass, about thirty feet away. Her back was turned to him so that he could see her magnificent brown hair just flowing in perfect waves on the Giant's breath. Clothed in nothing but a simple cotton dress—the kind that a house wife of Vegatria would wear. It was nothing flamboyant—nothing special at all. What was special was the woman. This woman, whose beautifully pale skin reflected the sunlight, was a goddess in her own right.

She was the love of his life—and he was nervous.

He swallowed, and took a step forward.

She began to turn around.

He stopped after that one step. His lip quivered. Tears welled up in his eyes.

She turned around completely, her neck slashed. She bled profusely onto her red, cotton, button shirt, from both the gaping wound and from her perfect lips.

Her perfect smile.

Yes, that's right. The last thing that she ever did was smile. It was such a beautiful, dimpled smile upon an irresistible, rounded face full of bliss. A loving smile. An effortless smile, as if the cut wasn't there at all. All of the blood in the world could not mask that smile.

She opened her mouth to speak, but could not. Her vocals were severed. But he knew what she said. He said it back, his heart crying out and skipping a beat as he did so. Then, her eyes, gold as the wolf's—more gold than the Golden Crop—closed, a single tear running off that rosy cheek to join the sparkling droplets left from yesterday's rain.

They would never open again.

And there she stood, fading away.

Then, he saw them. Jailwalkers—three of them, spaced about twenty feet apart—hundreds of yards away, their mouths gaping and their legs pumping through the grass toward him, befouling the Golden Crop. Wilting it. Killing it.

The man lowered his head. The tears fell from his eyes and his shoulders trembled. Then, his fingers trembled. Then, his knees trembled. His stomach plummeted. The air in his chest thinned.

He did not sink to his knees, but he did sob. He sobbed for a good few seconds.

Eternal seconds.

And then, he breathed in. He collected himself. His eyes shot forward.

One hundred yards. He could hear their screams now.

He drew his crossbow. He knocked an explosive bolt, lighting it with the torch.

There was fire in his eyes. It was brighter than the Golden Crop, and certainly more enraged. His eyes were on the Jailwalker in the middle.

He screamed as loud as he could, and then charged. He felt the Giant's breath reverse its direction. It was at his back. It was driving him forward.

He would show no mercy. These fields would be painted black.


End file.
